


Crazy About Clara Chronicles

by Kendrix



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study-ish, F/M, whouffaldi, whouffle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 15:01:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 85,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7939021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kendrix/pseuds/Kendrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In his very repressed, restrained way, he's clearly as besotted with Clara as he ever was! That line in 'Dark Water' [...] that's about as close to 'I love you' as the Doctor can get." - Steven Moffat, DWM 484.</p><p>"It’s not very straightforward. I like the idea of the two of them being magnetically attracted to each other but they are also wary of each other at the same time. Kind of like they’re both equally mysterious creatures, so they meet and just instantly get on. And this goes on as the series progresses. This guy has landed on her doorstep and offered her all of time and space, so she’s trying to figure out what he’s about, at the same time he’s always trying to figure out what she’s about”<br/>— Jenna Louise Coleman on the Doctor and Clara relationship </p><p> </p><p> Assorted writings detailing the Doctor's Clara-related monomania and their ongoing struggle to divine each other's meaning. Obviously, Whouffle in all its shapes and forms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introductions

**Author's Note:**

> "I think the Doctor is crazy about Clara, he loves her in a very deep way that is not just about romance. It goes to a deeper territory of affection."
> 
> -Peter Capaldi
> 
> Hence, the title of this fic.
> 
> Welcome and thank you for your time, this will be a collection of assorted material dealing with the human schoolteacher Clara Oswald, and the Time Lord scholar known as the Doctor, and the complex, fascinating, deep, multilayered dynamic between the two, so far mostly little character oneshots, but might include longer multichapter things with plot later if I find the time. Will probably feature all Doctors at some point, but mostly 12 because he's just delightful.
> 
> But first, a little disclaimer: Don't bother with the lawyers, I freely admit that I do not own 'Doctor Who', and I'm not earning a single Euro with this.

Given the various recent revelations, there is probably no easy way to measure how long she's known him, or how long he's known her, but it probably sufficed to say that it probably wasn't the same number for each of them – What really mattered, in any case, were three years since he first appeared on her doorstep, unbidden, unexplained and yet unable to constrain a vastness of obvious affection, admiration and gratitude that she didn't remember earning.

The sudden situation certainly _was_ as one could easily imagine, somewhat flattering, in a way she was embarrassed of, because really? Wasn't she supposed to be a mature person here? God knows she tried to be.

-But also somewhat frightening, the unknown beckoning her to take a step that she didn't know the consequences of.

Since then, she has seen quite a lot of him, perhaps more than he would ever have revealed by choice, were it not for that fine, insidious web of _circumstance_ that was woven through this universe – in his business, he'd see the ripples of an advent _something_ longbefore he'd encounter the cause of the effect, and he'd continue to carry the darkness he found there for ever after. Maybe this once, it could be a lucky stroke for them, something true and solid to emerge out of the confusion, or at least, some part of her must have thought so, she fears – given the stakes and risks, the very idea should have been to ridiculous to even occur to her more than any such cheesy ridiculous thing, she wanted him _safe_ , yet maybe some part of her had come to think that she knew all of him, that she had him well under control, because it was simply the natural tendency with which to approach the world when your greatest fear is being lost; Maybe she had indulgently neglected to keep her ego under wrap and become a little too proud the last time she'd noticed that subtle, subversive little twitching of his hands that indicated that he wanted his anxieties remedied with a hug, thought herself way too sure to have read him like a book.

On an intellectual level, she knew to be reasonable with her expectations, she had long valued the idea of a person who stood for morals, for showing the right way, of a deep, independent person who walked this world with firm confidence, so she tried to cultivate a sense of these qualities in herself, but it was a process that she had to put work into, not something that she could just rely on finding every time when her emotions weren't quite catching up with her mind and deserved better than to be ignored.

She knew well that, on a certain level, another person could never be fully understood, controlled or assessed by another, no matter how much information she managed to amass about them, people were dynamic, unpredictable balls of randomness, chemicals and defining decisions not even they themselves could fully fathom; Try as she might, there was simply a limit to how far she as a separate person who couldn't even see into their heads would be able to predict and plan for the reactions of any given person, not her family, not her students, not Danny or even herself – She didn't need to be told that she should be able to accept it, but it still _grated_ her, the thought of things, little things in her life that she didn't mind having around indefinitely turning into full blown _situations_ that required talking about, addressing and _reacting_ that might be taken out of her hands.

So why, oh why, had she then insisted on associating herself with one of the _less_ predictable individuals roaming out in this universe? The little, frightening moments had always been there, the idea of being a mere ghost and the things he didn't tell her, but maybe she had been distracted by the rest of the whole, enough to be swept up in the stream of events until she found herself in a crashing time machine, staring a the lines and creaks of a face she had never seen before. It would occur to her later that perhaps that one image was the closest to encapsulating their entire relationship that a single moment could ever come: The two of them, staring at each other with nigh identical expressions of utmost bewilderment, each eying the other like they were the strangest, most inexplicable creature they had ever seen, not just with wonder, but just as much fear, fascinated by the kind of mystery that required equal measures of vice as well as virtue to pursue, and all this, _all this_ none tool ong after they had been to hell and back.

As a teacher, answering questions was part of her job, and one of the things she always repeated to her students was that there was no such thing as a _stupid_ question for they were each an opportunity to learn something new, but there were certain types of questions that she would hail as very good, those who provided the best and most convenient of opportunities, a bridge to lead to broader, less clear-cut subjects, still pendant holes in our knowledge and patches of genuine, fundamental ambiguity in our reality, the sort of question that could not definitely be answered by finding one word or telling one story. The best questions out there were those who, upon closer inspection, blossomed into an entire tide of never ending enigmas.

His name was just a word in a book, his world just a rock full of ...basically _people_ , but his mystery went far beyond that... And it was that very person she never consciously, but somehow implicitly assumed to have figured out, the person who had previously gone out of his way to keep her safe and comfortable, who ended up driving her up the wall like never before in her life.

It was like the discovery of the neutron; Just when she thought she knew everything, she found herself back at square one, with nothing but questions and hints of cracks and inconsistencies she had been missing all along. She was made to ask herself whether she even knew who he was, whether she hadn't misunderstood from the very beginning, what to do with the things that kept coming out of his mouth and how she could never tell wether he was being genuinely oblivious, offhandedly grumpy or deliberately passive-agressive. Why would she even put up with this abrasive, _astonishingly_ insulting piece of _Teflon_ and why would she bother to come up with ways to excuse him to the world, what was it was that made her go back to a world of fear and harsh decisions, and then wonder whether she even _should,_ and why she had gone and stabbed him right into all these doubts and fears and uncertainties just as he had laid them bare, that man with the wildest, most terrifying eyes , eyes that could, in a manner of moments, switch to observing her with that lost, insecure expression, like he was trusting his everything to her guidance, his quiet voice requesting the same frankness back from her.

Where was the common denominator in that? What was she possibly supposed to make of him? Weren't there lines she had to draw, principles she was supposed to stick to, disrespect no one should be willing to accept no matter what?

There came that moment when they were together on that Space Train, racing past the ruins of entire star systems, when she found herself voicing the distinction that while she wasn't sure whether she could carry on with the space traveling and their "things", throwing him out of her life completely was a different affair she found herself far more reluctant with; They were, of course, practically inseparable, him and that moody time machine of his, but it made her think. About him, about how she came to see his point of view and to which degree that was a place from which she wanted to be looking at this world from, and whom those words about choices were really meant for, or spoken about. Was there something about her that Could actually _want_ this, the _horrible_ weight, the possibility of getting it all wrong, the knowledge that she could be tempted, that inner "philosopher" or "teacher" she used to think was the best part of her, wanting to see how her ideas and theories held up, to implement them in practice, playing the smartass even in the middle of the potential destruction, getting off on the power, even, or merely the thrill, and what did that make her?

Indeed, what was she, in the great scheme of things?

That man was a bossy, showy, insensitive liar, he was childish prick who hated to lose, secretive to the point of paranoia and at times downright _insufferable,_ but what exasperated her the most about him was that he led her to question herself, that he pushed her to examine her ideas and beliefs, to confront those very same traits in herself forced her to grow beyond what she had been before in the confines of her perfectly organized, relatively controllable comfort zone.

And, be it a virtue or a vice, in the end, she _wanted_ to be challenged; She _wanted_ to understand more about this world, its wonders and its truths, and is was this what bound them together, for better or for worse, this is what they shared with each other, what imbued their connection with more depth than any tangling of their time lines could ever have accomplished.

He really valued that side of her, too, no matter how difficult he might be from time to time, the part of her that pushed _him_ forward and made him aware of _his_ flaws, even joking that he ought to pay her, which, in a way, he already did in ways that no money on this world could compare to; She didn't know much about the many others who had come before her, apart from the occasional fond or hilarious or extraordinary anecdote, hints of a history, memories that carried too much weight to be mentioned any way but lightly; As far as she could tell, many of them had little ties to their place of origin to begin with, or had not been particularly satisfied with their lives; The usual pattern seemed to have been that they moved into his blue box full time, at most popping back now and then to pay a visit to any living family they might have, many of them eventually staying behind somewhere among the stars, having found a potential spouse or a place to apply their newly-found skills to their fullest potential, and she wasn't the type to think less of them just for that alone; If there was nothing worthwhile waiting for you wherever you lived, maybe leaving was exactly what you _should_ do.

But Clara herself had _not_ packed up immediately, quit her job and jumped into his spaceship, she had no reasons to do so – The things she had been doing in her life so far, her hobbies, her line of work, her love for working with children, her pursuits of her interests in art and philosophy, the time spent with her family, her students her colleagues and her all-time-favorite co-worker, Mr. Pink, whose very own, very different brand of quiet wisdom she had come to value, they were all exactly what she wanted to be doing, it was not always perfect, not always completely under control, but very much viable avenues to pursue different things that were important to her. Perhaps the regular Space Travel Days had simply become another component of that, a place to live and satisfied another part of her and share it with the one person who understood it like no one else could, the designated space for her to do awesome things with futuristic computers, do half of her communicating in the sort of silly lines she always wanted to say, but were guaranteed to lead to a major foot-in-mouth moment with, say, Danny, get to know new parts of herself and have her deep conversations about good, evil and the outer darkness... and among whatever shifts might have occurred between them after their visits to Trenzalore, those might be the one thing she wouldn't want to reverse for anything in the world; Before, he would probably have downplayed his doubts and worries, perhaps even tried to keep up a front for her like Vashtra had suggested, and, at most, requested a vague sort of comfort in a wordless, more physical way, but now, he might actually give her a straight answer as to what the actual matter is.

Even the times where she had felt like he'd left her behind, as much as they had scared her and thrown her into confusion, even when confronted with the possibility of things going out of control and the prospect of failing, she couldn't deny that he had always been there to collect her; It was easy to forget that he was not nearly as confident as his track record would suggest, or as omniscient as his boasting would have you think; Maybe that was another thing they had in common. Perhaps that was while it took her a while to conceive of the thought that perhaps, he thought that there were some situations (aside from "talking to people") that she might handle better than him, that she and those before her had always consistently shown him the way out even when he couldn't find it.

He has properly come to rely on her. Because he trusts her, because he knows she is capable, and frequently finds himself in situation where everything will be lost either way if he doesn't make full use of all the resources at his disposal.

And once she understood that, it was just got so much harder to think badly of him.

Maybe there was no such thing as an all-changing epiphany and the only way to answers, to doing _good_ was to endlessly doubt your own justice, to check again and again whether your current course was consistent with your ideals and correct it every time, to remind yourself of what it was you believed in. Maybe to love someone, in whatever way, was to love them with all their flaws, not even _in spite_ of them, but with the imperfections becoming just another part of the picture, that was still something troublesome to be kept in check, but, in moderate quantities, added a measure of uniqueness. Maybe to feel accepted, one must first accept oneself, a necessary step that the two of them just hadn't taken yet. Maybe one day, he would teach her what she already seemed to have taught _him_ , without ever knowing it, how to let her guard down and show her true self to the world, warts and all, messy rough angles included. Imperfect as they may both be, the probability that they would _both_ decide to jump out of an airlock _at the same time_ was negligible enough; Maybe they could make that journey together.

She had no way of knowing what tests and revelations might still be lurking in the dark of their personal future, or where their voyages would lead them, but whoever knew...

Both of them might just learn something new.


	2. Observations

It seems like like such a _silly_ observation to make, and she's sure that if she ever were to say it out loud, he'd never let her hear the end of it – But he can hardly expect her _not_ to spend any time looking at his face, or thinking about it, after went and _changed_ it.

He has, as far as she can tell, roughly four distinct types of smile, that he employs depending on the context and the situation, as vague at his grasp on both these concepts can be at times.

The most frequent is, of course, the cheeky, cocky one he wears whenever he's in the process of showing off, or about to about to outwit someone, which essentially amounts to the same thing. He thinks he's so incredibly smart sometimes, and the worst is, he usually _is_ , which makes the few times he isn't all the more elusive to him.

She may not be completely innocent in that department either, she absolutely got the feeling behind it, but in the end, it was always _her_ who ended up having to convince the locals to put up with him long enough for him to get them out of whatever mess they had gotten themselves into this time – but at the end of the day, when the problem was solved and he paused to do one of his little victory dances, the corners of that small, pleased smirk refusing to be suppressed, his attempt as a dark, imposing-looking costume subverted by these ridiculous white dots on his dress shirt, she wonders how it's possible that she ever failed to _see_ him.

Then, there's _that one grin_ that she would, and probably _had_ recognized in a thousand different times and places, the one that looked so utterly the same no matter what face he wore, so very contagious, wide, plastered everywhere, taking over the eyes, brimming with excitement, unfailing in the face of danger, when he was running towards the nearest explosion.

It was usually a sudden, momentary thing, but liable to stay for a while if he found something to gush about.

There was just some very particular, characteristic feature about the way it spread out from within, the wild, manic sparkle undimmed by the years, and it assured her that, no matter how much suffering he might have to face, his passion for this world was something he would never give up.

She had seen the bittersweet one quite often on their many adventures, a sight that was unexpectedly frequent on his last face when she stopped to think and consider it, which was probably why he'd done his best to avoid considerations like the plague; He'd try his hardest to conceal it all, to hold on to his ideas of wisdom and the resolve that such important moments deserved better than just sadness, but insidious as it was, the combined weight of lifetimes of loss, tragedy and regret would always seep through, hinting at a wealth of realized implications and similar stories he was only just holding back, connections and images that might occur to someone who knew his whole story, words he wished to say but decided to keep to himself, because it wouldn't be fair, because it wouldn't help, because he had much to atone for and aware that he should be starting right here, by putting someone else _first,_ and it was moments like these that had her thoroughly convinced that, for all his flaws, imperfections and ambiguities and all the times she's wanted to smack him in the face and never see it again, she could never fully hate him with all of her heart, this man who'd readily give up all of himself to protect the ones he loved.

And she'd thought that was all of it, once upon a time, she though she had it all ordered and categorized, at least as far as the rough outline went, but it was then, after their venture on the Orient Express, when she though she had just gained another chuck of understanding, when the uneasy progression of her still uncertain feelings led her to a point where she decided that she would be staying with him after all, he went and surprised her all over again with the way his features just _melted_ into pure bliss, every bit as unfiltered as his harsh comments or darker musings could be, restrained only perhaps by a tinge of absolutely hopeless, school-boyish awkwardness around the corners.

It's not warm, exactly, but she can't come up with a good word to describe it without squeezing it too much into one particular interpretation and leaving out some of the many things it seems to express; The best she can manage is to call it "pretty", in the way a little girl might describe anything that makes her happy.

And she's also positive that she's seen this somewhere before in all the time she's known him, but she can't say when, perhaps it was always mixed up with something else, or maybe she hadn't learned to notice, maybe she hadn't payed attention to the right things;

When she thinks back to their earlier travels, there are obviously memories of moments that were difficult, but the default images that come up within her mind are of them always smiling, always happy together. Right after he changed, there were times when she wondered how long it had been since she'd last seen anything beyond cold harshness, anything positive at all come from his direction, but as he stands before her now, she is suddenly fiercely glad to know that he wouldn't bother with the pleasantries, because it wouldn't actually make the difficult situations any better, and she's seen that he'd rather face her disappointment than give her false hopes that will do her no good;

And because it allows her to know that, when he smiles at her like that, beaming like a newborn star, like the whole of his world raises or falls with her answer, it is as genuine as anything in this world can be.


	3. Carmen (Exactly what you deserve Remix)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (written right after 'Dark Waters')

_Of all evil I deem you capable. Therefore I want the good from you. Verily I have often laughed at weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws._

_-Friedrich Nietzsche_

* * *

"All I need is one moment where I can exceed her speed."

Its a line he once reads in a comic, slouching on a couch in a somewhat unorthodox position, mostly trying to pass the time while Martha was sleeping. It's one of these Japanese swordy-fighty stories, and he doesn't know how it begins, or even how it ends, because that is how he stumbles through stories, both in fiction and reality; The beginning is often boring, the author perhaps needing a while to get a definite grip on their style, and endings are just depressing – So he will barge in halfway through, perhaps to look up some reference he's seen somewhere else, and perhaps he will even stay a while and follow the threads on the story, only to put the books aside and perhaps come back decades later, to a wildly different part of it, or get lost in the pages after a trip to revisit his favorite moments of the story – what he likes about this particular one is that its protagonists, engineered to be human weapons through gruesome weapons, were still able to hold on to their personhood through their bonds with their comrades, and eventually rebelled against the organization that would prefer them as unfeeling, perfect soldiers when they had the potential to be so much more – The leader of the rebellion is one of his favorites, an usually level-headed, big sister-like figure who specializes on speed. In the current chapters, she was faced with the resurrected corpse of one of the most terrible, most impossibly fast warriors of the past, and basically uses the help of her comrades to defeat her either way, a message that he basically agrees with, but has seen executed too many times for it to really catch his eye – what gives him pause is something about the villainess herself, and the way she was outwitted.

She fell victim to her pride, as villains are wont to do, but there is more than that.

He can't even say what exactly it is that gives him pause, he _might_ get to the bottom of it if he took the time to process it, but does have a fair guess that the answer might be something he will not like. It just gets stuck in there somehow, the mental image of the resurrected villainess realizing that she cannot catch up, not even knowing that it was a clever trick and not hard-earned skill that allowed leader-girl to briefly beat her at her signature move, the way she charges her foe with single-minded focus at the expense of everything else, ending up destroyed in the crossfire of a nearby battle between a pair of unrelated monsters.

When he finds his way to the Dalek Asylum so many, many years later, the line is incandescent in is mind, resurfacing in the most unbidden manner when the understanding finally clicks into place.

And just like the villainess and those long forgotten pages of paper, he was lost the moment he was captivated, and captivated the moment he was exceeded.

Sure, there was also the irony, that a quick, metaphorical summary of all he found beautiful in this world would appear in the shape of all that he hated, that the Dalek's grotesque experiments to assimilate the 'human factor' would create something they couldn't control, that they, themselves products of mad science gone horribly right, would have their creations turn against their Masters because the Spark of person-hood refused to let itself be extinguished;

But he knew nothing of that when he sped down the corridors full of his wasted, ancient foes, deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness, beckoned, lured, _enticed_ by a faraway voices that promised intrigue, power, and logistically impossible soufflés.

He doesn't know how she imagined herself, within the confines of her mind, and at the time, he doesn't even have a face to assign to her, but with those notes seeping into his consciousness, his mental image of her starts to resemble the character from the opera, an ophelian madlady in a dress of dazzling scarlet, flowers in her hair as she calls him forward – the music, the piece of art, a manifestation of self-expression that tells a story of love is perhaps the most suitable symbol for the ultimate defiance she has been unceasingly upholding for over a year, against all odds of a grim reality that even she does not know in full; After all, love, beauty or self-expression is something that these marching metal monstrosities could never understand and perhaps terrified them all the more for it – Announcing her continued refusal to surrender her identity with a fanfare of classical music was not just an impressive manifestation of willpower, it had _style._

But perhaps it is also the same form that her splinters of awareness had taken, the ones she couldn't suppress; For along with the melody, the lyrics carried a warning, telling of a fickle, unpredictable woman as unattainable and unreachable as a puff of smoke, or a flower in the mirror, or the reflection of the full moon in the middle of a lake, or the sound itself as it rings out into orbit, transmitting from the depths of the Dalek Asylum.

"Prends garde à toi!" - "You best beware!"

"Si je t'aime, prends garde a toi."

If I love you, you best beware.

You best _beware_.

* * *

You best beware.

For someone who valued his freedom so much, he sure didn't take all too well to isolation.

Every day he lived his dream of going somewhere new very far away, where no one would knew who he was, when he should long since have realized that every new fresh start would lead him back to the same old results as far as long as he took himself with him;

And where ever he went, there was chaos, perhaps, ultimately, because he did seek it out, and had this lovely blue box who was both very skilled at seeking it out, and just as curious as him to see what would result if she just fired him at the place.

It took him a long while, but after making a deliberate effort to scatter himself and she strips and snapshots of his story all over creation, it was, perhaps only a matter of time until he had found his way in all these near-catastrophes and nigh-apocalypses; He stole a _time machine_ , he didn't just set out to see different _places_ , not even places that were only available for a limited amount of years, but _events_ as well. And people, whether he knows of whatever extraordinary future might await them, or not; It's like this that he comes across a plethora of artists, musicians and writers, researchers, politicians and activists, freelance paranormal hunters or even legends, future presidents left and right, whether their started out as haughty know-it-alls given to him as unwanted aides or sassy schoolgirls he immediately clicked with; He gets to meet the last centurion, the warrior queen of Krontep, the Bad Wolf, the one and only Captain Jack Harkness, even the Most Important Woman in the universe, and they were all so utterly worth it, but an unintended consequence of his widespread involvement was, of course, that it was no longer that easy to withdraw him from the equation; And sooner or later, it was, perhaps, unavoidable that someone might try.

Oh, he had tried to cover his tracks, to mend his wicked ways, to erase himself from history, but the thing was, while her certainly didn't _like_ to be feared, there were times where it was _practical_ , where _lives_ would be at stake and wouldn't allow him to even consider whether he could _afford_ not to make use of his reputation, or to take steps to avoid leaving an impression.

Time could be an unexpectedly flexible thing sometimes, perhaps it was perfectly possible for many of these events to have flowed along their predetermined paths without his involvement, here and there, but _oh_ , the cumulative effect, now that the connections _had_ been made. Little things he changed, that went on to influence and change other things, carrying his influence further through the fabric of reality like a bloodline; the effect of his deeds needn't even have been _positive_ , at the bottom line, it was enough if they were _massive_. Pull him out at inopportune moments, and there'd be no telling whether entire chains of events wouldn't just fall to bits like a house of cards. At the very least, the people close to him would be affected, people he had _changed_ such as Vashtra or Strax; There was way more at stake here than just his own, measly life – and all this had eventually necessitated his entanglement in yet another major event, several events, that were really just a series of time travel accidents and what had been done to fix it but still touched him in a fairly personal way, as one assumed it would, to know that she always has been, and until the end of his days will be all around him, but what makes her 'impossible' is not merely her means of showing up, but what she is when she does and that was all _her_ – He got himself tangled in a _girl_ , and her in him, like the Fates of greek mythology had grabbed the threads of their lives, pulled them in opposite directions like rubber bands, and then let go to watched them intertwine, until they were thoroughly splattered in each others existences, head to toe, birth to death even, in his own case at least.

Even before getting involved in it, if any variation of the word "before" is even meaningful in this concept, she looked at his scar left upon the world, and found it beautiful; There wasn't even a purely sensoric impression born from the mind of an impressionable, innocently unknowing girl; If she didn't understand its meaning then, she must have reached some inklings of comprehension at some point, perhaps after her own intimate contact with the very structure of his deeds, and she still went and described him as someone who "stops bad things happening at every minute of every day", an astonishingly short time after she very nearly smashed his face (after he basically just got it, too!) to express the extent of her disapproval; He was quite used to both kinds of reactions, and while he couldn't deny that the former made him feel somewhat flattered, it was the latter that he most appreciated, and this was, perhaps, why he found a certain unique comfort in people who were always eager to complain, or at least, not easily impressed (Examples, on a sliding scale from the former to the latter, would include Donna Noble, Peri Brown, Liz Shaw, Ian Chesterton or Sarah Jane Smith – not that this would have been the most defining trait or valuable feature of any of them), even when his own approach to the world was more one of trying to cultivate wonder.

Admiration based on an illusion was worthless at best and at worst, a dissapointment waiting to happen, so any delight he might take from praise or gratitude would always be tinged with a bitter aftertaste; Certainly, there were those in this world who thought of him as a champion of this world, someone who might one day grab them by their hands, reignite intrigue them with his mystery and save their world, or perhaps just give them the slight nudge they needed to realize that they could save it themselves, and ended up going very far in their belief that he was worth it and deserved to be paid back, but is is those very efforts , those assurances that they wanted him safe that put everything they said in doubt; Spectacular cases like Rose Tyler or River Song are only the most prominent ones, in part because he managed to... sort of fix things or do his best to make up for it, respectively, but most of the time, he can't do a thing.

After so many centuries, Davros' eerie rasp was still as fresh in his memory as ever, blending into a chorus -

" _...the Destroyer of Worlds!"_

" _...would anyone have died?"_

" _Is it that what you did to her, turned her into a soldier?"_

" _Do you realize how dangerous you make people to themselves?"_

" _...you can always tell with the aristocrats."_

He can't say he's ever been very skilled, or serious at convincing others that he was fickle, unattainable thing, that they should best beware, because honestly, who cold ever honestly go on living that way?

He's tried to stop once, to turn away anyone who would come with him, more than once; The second time, taking the additional precaution of staying in one place and time to avoid a repeat of the things that followed the first, but in the end, it was prophesized to fail by the most obvious of clues – His title had ultimately become was it was by means of being used, only coming to take on its full significance along the way, and mostly _after_ his departure and subsequent visit to Skaro, but there _was_ a reason he'd chosen it back then, when he was still relatively young, but tired of leaving the task of defining himself up to his surroundings and the nicknames his classmates had thought up in his stead. ("Theta Sigma" being by far the most prominent one, a terribly punny joke on the tendecy of his grades to be either barely tolerable or unexpectedly eceptional depending on his mood and level of investment)

He'd briefly considered "The Scientist", but that might've been a little too much to live up to hile still not denoting quite enough, and besides, too unpersonal for a title, so he went with his academic degree, at the time more indicative of his qualifications as a _physicist_ , not a physician, but of course, having since spent so much time gavillating around with the explicit purpose to gather more knowledge, his present claims of omnidisciplinary expertise were quite justified, although physics – and engineering, for which knowledge of physics was always a huge advantage – had always remained his forte.

The title was certainly an admission that he understod himself as a scholar first, but certainly not the ivory tower version of common perception, but the reality of someone who is passionate and curious about the world and what makes it tick; He must protest the notions of "Measuring the marygolds" and similar concepts; There is nothing that knowing how exactly something works takes away from its value or the experience of experiencing it, but the wonder your average 5-year old seems to be born with needs to be both preserved undiminishedly, and tempered with stringent methodology so one can be sure of the results; Or that, at least, was his idea, the plan he started with, before everything got complicated, but at the bottom of it all, there was his point where he recognized curiosity as one of his fundamentally defining traits, later adding the corollary that a passionate appreciator of the wonder in this world should not like to see it wasted, a conclusion that the Master or the Rani had certainly never reached, but – there it was, that important detail of truth about him; In the end, he was, and always would be, a slave to his curiosity, for better or for worse; So all it took to rouse him from his pits of despair, all that was needed to shatter his conviction to resist his usual impulses time and time again was an unsolved mystery – a little scottish girl in a house that was far too big, an intriguing woman who should have been twice dead... how could he ever, possibly resist? How could he _not_ poke it with a stick, take them with him so he might observe them both in and out of their native environment

And perhaps, in some ways, the mystery _would_ just be an excuse to allow himself to accept the kindred spirits involved in both these incidents into his world, to make the unreasonable, but understandable choice to mitigate the loneliness of _right now_ at the price of the pain that would undeniably follow, and he'd be unable to deny that he'd brought it upon himself, that the pain he was running towards was exactly what he deserved;

But whatever that was, 'what he deserved', be it pain, or respite, or the challenge he longed for, he would come to find that there was one woman out there who thought that, perhaps, it was a little bit of both, and seemed determined to make sure that he would receive every last bit of it;

And so it came to past that, after all his exploring and adventuring, he finally happens upon the impossible: a girl who could outdo _him_ with computers, who left _him_ marvelling at the beauty of her genius, who presented a mystery for _him_ to figure out, and ended up the one who'd grab his hand as a comfort, or simply to drag him along into adventure; A girl who could talk even faster than him, who would wind up saving _his_ native planet, or at least pointing him towards the way to do it, who wasn't even shy of his usual routine of tricking people into saving themselves so he could go and pull something potentially suicidal, someone who'd earn his admiration, who'd make _him_ want to pay it all back to her... the intangible woman in red who is all his curses and blessings at once;

She is wearing a red dress when he first sees her, and she is wearing another red dress when he takes her into his arms near the abyss that was meant to separate them from the heart of the TARDIS and back then, he was so relieved and overjoyed to find – or so he thought – that she wasn't a trick or a trap, that he might actually get to _keep_ her just as he was.

It isn't the unknown he should have been wary of, but the familiar, the simplest, most mudane of feelings, situations and ocurrences, the every day occurences during wich he has slowly allowed her to observe and assess him, and if secrets were mant to bring safety and protect from betrayal, all this might just have been the proof he needed to assure himself that he should never have let those walls melt down, that he was justified all along to keep her in the dark, but when that dark moment comes, there is – yes, rage, dissapointment and hurt, perhaps even regret, motly about other things, but to take it all back, to wish all this has never been, , he finds that he found way too much joy in their ways of being together, more than an one single moment could ever negate, even as he sees her without any mysticism or embelishment involved, filthy with the various fluids streaming down her face and the shame of her deeds.

* * *

The memories of his first impression, revealed at last once that pretzel of a time stream finally untangled itself far enough for him to retain them, turned out to contain mostly admiration. Certainly, his drained state after centuries of endless warfare would have left him quite susceptible to hopeful mirages, but he thought there must have been an undeniable grain of truth in the person he saw, the person who sat across him in that gallery, offering cups of tea and words of comfort, that firm upholder of what was _right_ , pointing him towards a way out when even he had given up all hope, as these brave, humans always did.

Maybe if he'd paid more attention, if he hadn't been so busy with other things, if he hadn't been so _weary,_ he might already have spotted the eerie halo of faint recognition that followed every turn of her face, every sounding of her voice – In that moment alone, at last, she is salvation, and in some ways, she always remained that.

When he finally becomes aware of her existence in a way he gets to retain during their encounter at the Dalek Asylum, he is immediately as wary of her as he is fascinated, but when he first meets _her_ , meets her properly a fashion recognizeable as a proper, old-school _beginning_ , his zeal, his protectiveness, the sheer unadulterated joy he displays are all purest _gratitude_.

But by then, he's seen his boyhood hero turn out to be a madman that ruled a warped universe inside a black hole, seen both one of the few teachers who ever seemed to see any potential in him and the very founder of the society he was born into turn out to be more megalomaniac than in the worst of the stories, and even that is practically a handful of funny anecdotes compared to the horrors he's seen in the time war; If all of this didn't beat any capacity to believe in any sort of saints or impossible heroes straight out of him, the many years he spent trapped on Trenzalore sure _did_ , all that time fighting, struggling, watching generations turn to dust before him, longing for the darkness that he was sure would release him from his strife, and those days and nights spent in silence, pondering the failings and mistakes of the life that led him here (Amelia! Just what had he _done_ to her when he left her to wait? Was it like this?) and bitterly understanding quite sufficiently that he never was, and never could be, anyone's dashing gentleman friend; And even though it was only the thought of _her_ that sustained him in all these years, his only beacon of light and the only reason he'd ever gotten off that planet in the first place (for now, that is), the wall left by the experience seems unsurmountable even when he gets back to her, and he's too old, too hard, too experienced, to miss these subtle details, how unsettingly efficient she is (and has been, in the past) in taken his role, how low blows are definitely on the menu ("Get back in your lonely little TARDIS!"), how she's definitely not telling neither him nor soldier boy the whole story, and how something seems off the very moment she steps into the console room that accursed day;

The hindsight poisons even the memories of the past, and he can now see the same power and efficiency in her dealings with the cybermen, or how even her counterpart in Victorian London (even before his involvement, as he almost thankfully notes) led two parallel lives, because she always, in any context, wants to experience it all, the respectable, perfectionist natural leader and the excitement of the nighttime, and, of course, an avid, pretentious buff of literature would label herself 'Miss Montague', a reference obvious enough to mock anyone who doesn't get it, an obvious alias, of course, rather like "John Smith".

He'd thought that, despite everythng, she had the wisdow to draw a line on how far she was willing to follow him and realized the follies and undesirabilities of his being, when she had the wisdom to remain behind on the earth during the incident with the forest, instead of begging him to save her loved ones at any price, or escaping by herself; He thought she'd quite understood that he couldn't fight physics, or the laws of the world, but aparently, he'd have no chance of ever predicting her, not in all ways, at least.

* * *

"It was all a dream" is perhaps not the most poetic, or impactful ending for a story, but there's a reason he's given up on the heroes in such stories, because they only ever end up one way, and given the life he lives and the threats he often deals with, he cannot afford to be that wretched old magician who gets himself trapped in a cave by his own magic, betrayed by his distractingly pretty student after she had learned all his secrets, after he couldn't help himsel from showing off and taught her too little of his "magic" to do her any good, and too much to save himself; They'd make a pathetic sight, and every mirror he's come across since leaving Trenzalore seems rather intent on making sure that he will not forget his folly.

But as he looks upon her, his _Nimue_ , his _Vivien_ , or Ninyave, depending which version of the myth one followed, his eyes turned cold and he could not help but observe in morbid curiosity, and while a great part of his emotional processes is occupied with being ripped wide open and reminding themselves that she's not even physically capable of knowing him as long as he's known her, and the he really ought to be more realistic with his expectations, but there was a certain callous little part of him that was almost impressed, or at least sufficiently dumbstruck to see that same... _will_ turned against him instead of the Daleks;

And yet, it is NOT the same, his Clara, the Clara he _thought_ he knew, would never have made such a stupid mistake, especially not after she'd gotten the recent incident with the 'invisibility watches' to pick up on, _certainly_ not after she'd recognized his making use of the propensity others might have toward that particular mistake as a staple of his modus operandi;

Had she been thinking clearly, had she not been completely inundated with chemicals and stress responses that made rational thought nigh impossible and otherwise just generally not herself, she would have realized that he usually made a point to make sure that none of the equipment he used could be turned against him, and thought of some other way to subdue him, likely quite sucessfully.

* * *

_"If it is no true, do not say it_

_If it is not right, do not do it."_

That quote, framed into your usual motivational poster layout together with a photograph showing a statue of her favorite Roman Emperor and the word "Integrity" printed in large, white letters, had served as her desktop background for many years; When she got rid of it, it was more for a simple change, and because motivational posters had become overused enough for her students to start snickering if they ever learned of this, but even if were still there, she would probably be unable to stand it by now; As a girl, she'd immediatel loved the straightforwardness of the quote, how it seemed to express the simple truth most poignantly, and in a way, she still thought so, still aknowledged that there was always the simple possibility to just _not_ do the wrong thing, but what had since changed was that this left her in a rather precarious position: Has she been naïve in thinking that others were lazy to do wrong, or would she just be lowly self-serving with any assertions that it was easy to be a saint in paradise?

Paradise was certainly not where she was going.

There were many words for a woman who's say "I love you" to one man while looking and thinking of another, and "liar" was one of the kinder ones.

Back when that picture still grazed her desktop, she'd shaken her head at the Doctor's suggestions that secrets could somehow make you safe, possibly, her influence was one of the things that made him throw that idea right out of the window, or at least backedal on it, she was quite positive that nowadays, his reactions to that situation might have been the exact opposite.

Back then, she did not see or perceive her own actions as "secretive", perhaps because she wanted to believe that what she showed to the world was not a perfectionist front, but simply her self that was just as she'd want it to be, and not quite as suceptible to fear; Turns out it took just a few shifts in situation to bring out the discrepancy, to make her quite aware that she might fall short, and be very terrified of that fact.

If it came to scary situations, the person that put her into them in the first place would hardly blame her for reactions that were only human, if doubting her decisions made her feel like an idiot, she could pin the blame right at whoever asked her to make it, but there was no simple way to excuse why she'd tell blatant, transparent lies to two of the most significant people in her life.

It was not that she somehow didn't care about them, or that's what she tried to tell herself; It certainly wasn't that any of them was somehow a... bad person, or wouldn't understand.

Danny Pink was as far from being an obediently marching little Dalek or a shoot-first-talk-later sort of dumb-muscle bully as the Doctor was from being a haughty aristocrat guy – he was positively anti-authoritarian, he was a _bookworm,_ he... always blamed himself for everything... and as for Danny, she figured he was nice enough, she liked the wisdom he would somehow exibit, and his devotion to protect children – She had chosen her profession in part so she could give to others what had been taken from her when her mother died, and while she didn't know the whole story, she supposed that it must be something similar with him. She had no _reason_ to turn him away, being single and all that, but of course, neither of them knew that about each other, and they certainly didn't owe it to her or the world to get along with everyone in it; They'd just pressed the wrong buttons with each other, and she certainly wasn't demand that they get along, she had no right ask that of them, and no intetion; That's why she'd tried to keep things separate at first, so that none of them started to _worry_ , or caused a _situation_ over this, so there wouldn't be any drama and nothing would have to change, and she would still be able to have her normal, successful life which included a job, a nice flat and a boyfriend, _and_ spend her voyages as a capable, save space adventurer.

Regardless of wether she could, or should give any of these things up, a pair of questions that she had been trying hard to avoid, she had never quite seen why she would _have_ to, why she couldn't have both and continue doing worthwhile things in either capacity; why would they have to conflict, if neither man had any interest in the sphere the other existed in?

Except, of course, that life did not fit into neat little cathegories, life was a messy, blurry, unpredictable afair that refused to be fully controlled, and at the end of the day, things might just... collide, migle, and leave her with the demand for a well-deserved explanation.

And oh, she _tried_ to mend her wicked ways, to get it all sorted and in order and how it belonged, how it should be, how a mature person ought to handle and arrange things so they could neatly coexist without overlapped, but in hindsight, it seemed so obvious how it was all inevitably doomed, her rehearsed, painfully artificial speech teeming with suspiciously specific denial, her post-its to keep in mind each of her planned, eloquent paragraphs, ever the English teacher, ever the big words, ever _**fake**_ , like a child's incincere promises delivered to placate nagging adults, " _Now_ I'll do it, _Now_ I'll behave, I promise, right tmorrow, I'm gonna start doing my homework and stop saying things that I shouldn't" - She had still thought that she'd get everything fixed if only she could apologize, and suddenly, she couldn't, and she was right back lost on their bank hollyday, or helplessly whimpering as her mother's body lost all of its warmth, after she'd used it to shield her young daughter from these rampaging shopdummy monsters.

As much as her guilty conscience insisted she ought to act like one, to the point that she might have done something very stupid if not for the insistent words of a dear person urging her to get her rationality working and be _certain_ before she acted on anything, in the end, she was – and would very much have declared this with pride under any other circumstances – not the type of hopeless romantic little girl that would throw away a deep, lasting connection beyond even a regular friendship for a simple love interest, which didn't make any of this any better, because that meant that it was all about _her_ , and her refusal to accept that there were things in this life that were cruel and random, things that were out of her hands and couldn't be controlled, like the simple truth that she had fallen short of her standards, made a mistake with a person who deserved better, and now, she could never ever fix this again, and it was all her fault...

And in that instant, all thoughts of what was 'right' or what she 'should' do were washed away – She just wanted this universe to do what she wanted it to, and she was willing to use all means at her disposal to make it obey.

Part of her even coldly reasoned that, if there was the slightest chance that her sheme could have worked, it was totally worth it, and she might do it again.

Part of her snapped back in anger even when using the words that should have been her acceptance of her quite deserved punishment for basically going and ruining yet another of the good things in her life...

But just as she was almost halfway out the door of the TARDIS, just as she was resigned enough to begin thinking that she was almost thankful for his pityless honesty, he turned his head to her, and started to say something so beautiful she thought she might die, from the weakness in her knees, the shame burning in her chest, and the way the instant shattered and broke around them, as if from that very familiar hopeless, merciless frankness.

There she was, all this time, wondering why she put up with him, why she bothered making excuses for that person, if she even knew him, and all the time, she should have asking the same things of herself;

Oh, sure he was pissed. He was dissapointed. He was _wounded,_ and didn't hesitate to make her understand that, but in the next breath, she sees him trying to build her back up, to give her streght, "Come on, get your brains back online, time to prove what we're made of!", willing to do what he could to give her things he could never have, with someone he didn't even _approve_ of, didn't even _like_.

It was the most startingly pure-hearted thing she had ever witnessed.

* * *

In this brief moment of respite they might or might not have had, as apocalypse brews all around them, they find themselves on the strairs of the cathedral, waiting for something unspecified, perhaps the right wind, perhaps an opportunity.

She's no longer sure if she believes in such a thing, if there is sense in hoping or wether it even matters; It's one thing when there's opponents to face and events to react to, something against which she can define herself through opposition and prop herself up through it; In the silence of this moment, there is only vagueness, only uncertain futures she can't guess at when she's not even certain of the present, of whom she just spoke to, and what it even means.

She sits there, a grown woman in black stockings and proper clothes, and all she can to is pull her legs to her body and hug her knees, when she has long since forgotten to make attempts at not weeping; She can only imagine how filthy she must look, in ways way beyond 'Wide face and a funny nose', all red and puffy and swollen, tears and snot sticking to her face, and of course, there's the moral repugnancy.

If there was ever any chance that her pretense at being mature and righteous was ever fooling anyone at all, the impressions should be so far damaged that it's no use to ever bother, and she honestly feels it might be easiest if she could just _give up,_ but there's still this whole situation, there is this tall, pale-faced man whom she has already thoroughly dissapointed and should have seen her true self quite clearly, but since he's somehow still there, some insidious piece of pride still fuels the usual reflexes that would otherwise quickly make sure that she isn't seen when she's making such a hot, sticky, salty mess everywhere.

She wants to do something about it, stop herself from looking like a lost little girl in front of her, but her limbs won't obey and the state of her face just gets worse, and while she might treacherously lower her face hoping that her hair will cover the mess on the front, but all hypothetic progress is undone by how her sobs just get louder.

"I'm not even sure... if I'm really crying because of _him_ , or just because of this mess I made..."

And of course, his unreadable gaze stays where it is, and no false reassurance comes forth.

"I know- I know it _should_ be him. It should be him. And I've- Even you-"

He's sitting there upright, arms rested on his knees, his frame sharply defined by the outline of his dark, red-lined jacket, and she feels she doesn't even want to know what she might find in his eyes right now, although she's sure that their glance is pinned somewhere between the mess that is her hair and the cloth covering her back. She knows that apologies will be useless if she doesn't mean them, and she can't even tell if she means them, so she can't even risk it, not when she's not even sure if anything about her own idea of herself was correct at all, even in the slightest bits.

All she has to cling to is the hope that, perhaps, she needn't fear the words as much if they come from her own mouth, if she can... anticipate them, they won't just hit her unprepared.

"...When this is over, you're going to boot me out, aren't you? You won't... can't ever take me with you again..."

His answer is in no way definite and opens with a serious, heavy sigh. "You do understand... that I can't let anyone have access to the TARDIS or certain delicate knowledge if I cannot trust them."

"So I'm... unsuitable?" she tries to summon up some 'fight' at this, forces herself to look up at him even with her visage in its full slippery, contorted glory. "Not a fit? Not good enough?"

"...I didn't say that."

Her movements and expressions become wild and vivid at that, although she is as much raging for her own benefit as she simply wants something clarified. "Don't. Just don't! Don't give me that!"

That does seem to surprise him, but judging by his serious look, he's expecting something quite different than what is about to come, and this doesn't change as she braces herself with numerous sobs, wanting this bit to get out without a misunderstanding.

"...Listen, just so we understand ach other... It's one thing if you're... pissed at me because of what I just did, I'd have no objections to give you there, if you said I wasn't trustworthy, or just didn't want to see my face again, there's nothing I can do to argue with _that_. But don't you go and brandish the martyr complex, and tell me that you're gonna do this for my own good. Don't you act like you're my bloody father or something, or worse than that. If we part ways tomorrow, I don't want you to go and act like everything that goes bad _ever_ if your fault, like you always do. You're really overstating your influence there, if you think all I do, even all I do wrong, everything any people around you ever do wrong, revolves around _you._ I'm not your... weapon, or your grunt, or someone you 'corrupted'. I screwed up. I really did, but that was me.

I did what I did, all the things I did, for many reasons of my own, and I can't speak for everyone who ever gor hurt in your vincinity, but I' sure they had their reasons for what they did, too, things they believed in, things they wanted to protect, not all of which have to agree with _you._ If you... if you honestly think that, y-you're doing them a greater disservice than yourself! My mistakes are _mine,_ okay? _I_ screwed up."

"Sounds almost like you're proud of them." he comments sadonically, and something about it really gets her seething, but, mostly for lack of any right to say anything, she finds that anger mostly evaporating as she struggles to continue her idea somehow, not even finding the words to really contradict him or find a real follow up to his words, not even the most minimal, 'Of course I don't'. "Just... don't blame herself, okay?" and the sincerity, the wish to leave at least something in order, surely tears at her. "And when you remember me, don't think of me as some... silly earthling that you didn't handle correctly, or some person that _you_ screwed up. Think of me as... this friend you had, or someone with the same hobby as you, who appreciated that nice vehicle you used to have access to because of where you happened to get born. We found that we... had a lot of thinks in comon, and then, I screwed up. Alright?"

Obviously, he shakes his head, but she defensively interrupts him before he can get any further than "Clara, Clara...".

"Whatever happened to... 'Some decisions are too important not to make on your own'? Don't you _dare_ decide this for me!"

"So you're sure then?" He asks, brusquely, straightforwardly. "You think this is definitely a good idea, to keep going? You _can_ handle it? Nothing like this will ever happen again? You understand that?"

And as if on cue, she falls back into herself, onto her knees, sobbing.

Sure she understands, but she understood before she even did it, and did it regardless. If the Understanding were the problem, she would at least have some way to fix it, but like this, she couldn't guarantee anything. She had only just lost her boyfriend an co-worker, and to have yet another important person drop out of her life right now was the last thing she needed; She imagine that maybe, one trip would even cheer her up a bit, but when she thought of one trip becoming many, and the further direction that might lead her into, she was much less certain. She was supposed to do the wise thing, but was what that even, could leaving all this behind in this mess of a state be called wise, when she'd still be the same when she'd be alone here, without him, and come to regret it as a hasty choice that didn't adress the real problem?

By now, she knew that asking for trips without the ocassional dangerous event was neither a realistic, or even fair thing to ask of him.

She didn't want to be alone; She didn't want even more things to change either way, and she didn't have the slightest idea what to do.

"I- I was going to be mature and reasonable..." she subben, obviously having given up all hope of being, or even appearing as any of these things. "If... if Danny were here, he'd want me to do the _mature_ thing-" and now, she could no longer contain herself. The floodgates opened, and she became a most undignified sight to behold, the level-headed, decisive teacher having completely given way to inelegant blubbering. "It was all because of me, if I hadn't lied... if I hadn't had to explain in the first place-"

And amids it all, in the most unexpected moment, there was a hand on her shoulder, attached to an arm that was awkwardly held in a position where there was as little contact as possible, but still placed there with deliberate precision.

"It's alright, I get it, believe me, I do. Loss does things to the mind."

And he really does get it. He's been there, he's lost people, dear people of various kinds; He has no right to claim any sort of high ground here, he hasn't had any for a long time, and he wished, he really hoped that perhaps, he could keep her from these feelings of loss, of guilt that he knows is probably the sort that will never go away, but what matters is that she's feeling all this now and that he understands it very well;

And that might just be the only silver lining to this horrible situation they've found themselves in, that the very thing that would usually be this largest, unsurmountable barrier between him and the humans around him could be the very thing that allows him to understand now, that allows him to be there for her now.

She had put up with _him_ , all the times he was being irrational or simply confused, all the mistakes he had made, and she was still here.

She had always been there, all this time, when he didn't know what it was living for, whenever he hadn't been sure what to do, and who he even was... and he had not forgotten. He had _not_ failed to value that.

What made her think he wouldn't pay her back, show _her_ another way when she couldn't find one, lead _her_ back onto the path, now that it was finally his turn?

Right now, in the state she's in, she might be forgiven for thinking that he's helping her out of nowhere, but he knew he was not, and she would too, soon enough; He is here right now because he has waded through that same darkness, because he's chosen his undoing as she's chosen hers.

"...doing all of this for me... after all I did... You must think that I'm a horrible person..."

"I think that it is very obvious that you don't want to be, and as someone once told me... that is probably the point."

And she thinks, just briefly, from the way she shifts his fingers on her shoulder, the slight melancholy tone in his otherwise matter-of-factly voice, and the way looks at her with those eyes of his, somewhat... softly, delayed in a way that makes him look very old, and very deep in thought, that he might very well actually grab her, press her against his chest and allow her to let her tears flow freely.

Obviously, he doesn't do that; He does something better.

Rising to his feet, he extends a single arm and offers his hand.

"Come. We have work to do."

* * *

"If I love you, you best beware.

For I might just be exactly what you deserve."


	4. United Again (Twin Hearts)

She doesn't even get a chance to think; The sound is just there and an instant later, so is the familiar creaking of the door, and she turns in a timeless daze, through the numbing viscousness of the nighttime air.

The blue box is framed in half-light and so she wonders if she dreams, if her brains aren't just erroneously computing those garish bits of illumination into familiar patterns and shapes; She is already so surrounded by surreality that she doesn't even pay mind to the slowing down of time, or the interplay of the interstitial darkness with the dim orange glowering from within.

She just knows that there is the long likeness of a man framed between the lights both warm and cold, a mosaic of shadow and pallor demanding to be processed.

In the twillight of their meeting place, he barely even resembles a human, not even by the distorted sharp outline of his angular form; His colorless eyes reflect the light in an eerie gleam and the shadows find plenty of burrows and crannies in the lines and contortions of his wild face; His unusually ordinary clothing takes away much of the refinement from his appearance and accentuates the scruffy bits, and cast in the sharp contrasts by the light from their silvery sky-egg, he looks so very pale and gaunt, more so than she remembers, and the lines on his face have less in common with the wrinkles of your friendly neighborhood pensioner than the crumpled bark on a venerable oak tree or the ancient crevices of a mountainrange;

And yet, all she perceives are merely the letters, that once put together, come to spell out what is simply the shape of a dear person dolefully missed, a kindred mind and a soul she thought she might never touch again.

She doesn't recall how her hand got on his arm, but she urgently needs to make it do the talking because her face is utterly frozen in place and the comfirmation of his cool, reacting flesh and blood beneath her palm seems more likely to exascerbate it than to offer mitigation; But she had to know, is still desperate for knowledge of whether he isn't just another part of this crazy flurry of color, snowflakes and bad jokes, so she won't go squandering any of those emotions on an inevitable disapointment.

Then of course, he tells her exactly what she needs to hear, because _of course he does,_ seriously and gruffly and in the middle of the business he's conducting, but she thinks he's taking care to phrase his words not like an order, but a request between friends, because wasn't this the conclusion last time, that friends are better than armies? And all the memories rush back with the realization that they're staring at each other like that time when he first took this form; Back then, they had recoiled in confusion, yet remained bound by the crass gawking of confused fascination, but this time, their motions seem to draw them toward each other, with him leaning in more than his demonstrative explaining would necessitate, or that succint slipping of her hand further down his arm as she follows, like the many things she now wants to say or do, like she was afraid he might just dissapear back into the night if she ever let go.

But even she doesn't think that an illusion could renew the memory of his voice, his most particular way of saying her name, the rough clarity of the vowels and the twirl in the 'r' and the frankness of understated devotion when he would say it over and over again, repeated like one of those incoherent scribbles on his blackboards: Clara, my Clara, claraclaraclara.

Like ever before, his voice was enough, the promise that made her press on despite her emotions, simple instructions and an urgent tone that told her all she needed to know, and in that instant, a part of her that had been dreaming for a long time rises to the surface like a mermaid jumping out into the air with a boastful splash, and in an instant, she understands, she nods, connects, trusts and saves the feelings for later, and without a moment's hesitation, they are an unit again, _united again_ amongst their midwinter snow.

From the moment she starts moving until the TARDIS doors snap shut behind her, his eyes, face and body remain turned towards her alone.

Working to pump warmth into the peripheral edges of his form, his twin hearts beat strong, in this second chance at life that is a gift from _her_.


	5. Patterns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The result of some rewatching the first few s8 episodes; Just something I noticed. I find they have immense rewatch value, especially if you spent the first few episodes just... not yet quite acclimatized to our protagonist.

 

It does occurr too often to be a mere incidental coincidence, and is far too specific a situation for the diffuse label of being a 'tendency', but they were not concious enough of its ocassional repetition for it to be one of these phrases they would repeat to each other to tug at very particular shared meanings, associations and memories of previous encounters, like a 'motif' or perhaps a sort of insider-metaphor.

Nonetheless, this type of exchange came up often enough to constitute at least a recurring pattern.

It would start with any situation like this, the usual lottery pick between a spaceship, a high building or an elaborate underground base, or whatever else might contain a sufficient amount of steely corridors for them to run through, them, and this week's designated band of potential would-be survivors, and along the way, they would inevitably stumble about sights that were definitely not pretty – this time, she was the first to spot it, by a sound that she might have described with a more appropiately dark metaphor if she had been aware of its true nature when she first perceived it and associated it with misplaced bits of gooey strawbery jam dropping down on a table;

The source was, at least, just about the same color and consistency, but the field of associations and reactions it evoked would be very much the opposite, so long as one actually liked strawberry jam and thus connected it to the relative safety of a cozy kitchen and an appetitizing sight, which the thing that was sticking to the ceiling of the corridor and dripping down in chunky bits right now was very much _not_ ; The outward, peripheral parts of it were still identifiable as what little remained of the limbs and head of an aspiring young man they had encountered a few hours ago, back when this whole situation still looked like it might turn out to be a pleasant road trip, and those dreams and plans he had described to them still held a chance of coming true.

She recalled adressing him with words of encouragements earlier, and she _thought_ that the Doctor had tried the same, although some of his remarks ended up being more on the counterproductive side, leaving her with the task of shutting him up, just one of the _many_ tasks she seemed to have gotten stuck with lately – In the light of the grotesque spectacle before them, the memory lost all of its humorous tinges forever.

And there was a time where Clara would have screamed at this sight, or at least frozen up and entered a futile battle to banish the uneasy chill and discomfort that would invariably take up residence in her bones, (and unknowingly prompt a certain bow tie wearing wanderer to curse himself over his dubious justifications for bringing her into these situations in the first place) but in the wildernesses of this world, to live was to adapt, and while there would never be a day on which the thought of her own mortality would leave her completely unfazed, Clara Oswald had always been very, very good at adapting.

The idea that necessity was the mother of all ingenuity might be a comforting idea cooked up to pretend that hellholes are opportunities, but it can very much be an effective fertilizer, and what her evironment demanded right now was a further sharpening of her preexistent alertness, a grim narrowing of her eyes and a strategic tensing in certain parts of her face and limbs.

At first, nobody else seemed to have taken note of the gruesome scene, but the Doctor almost immediately noted the shift in her bearings and sucessfully utilized it to pinpoint its aim, the exact spot from which the twitch in her arms was meant to back away from, and when he turned to look, so did everyone else, and the screaming was upon them at long last, shrieks and gasps all around them, the loudest of all courtesy of the unfortunate barchelor's younger sister.

Nonetheless, the first person Clara finds herself turning towards once her body slides out of its initial frozen stupor is the one single man who remains the silent eye among the brewing storm of clamor and turmoil, a tall frame whose narrow, sharp face seems merely concentrated, its upper portions most certainly narrowed in appropiate seriousness, brows furrowed like heavy rainclouds nearing the moment of an electric discharge, but all in all, he probably appeared to be the calmest person in the room at the time she cautiously screened his face and posture for any discernable hints, and, not even certain of what she should have been looking for or what 'okay' even looked like on this particular set of hardware, asked, **"Are you okay?"**

And if he even perceived her, not just her voice but the entire complex construct of expression, body language and tone of voice that she's aiming in his direction, it certainly doesn't show as he simply walks past her, his attention focussed at the mystery in front of them at the expense of anything else, the very way of moving about making her wonder how he could manage to appear this inacessible with a basically human-shaped form, something about the way he had his head and limbs perched forward, that was too dominant to be labelled 'tentative', but certainly probing.

He squats down under the mess on the ceiling all while he peers up at the spectacle itself like a predatory animal in waiting, like the motions aren't even connected to each other, just carefully ordained to fulfill their purposes by a faraway pupeteer, and even she can't fathom why he is doing this at all until she notices him using two fingers to sweep up some of the stinking red goop from the floor and hold it in front of his face to give it a good look without having to turn his neck, and when both their conciousnesses are grazed by the beginnings of voices protesting, he gestures with his other arm and gruffly barks out a "Shut up!" -

And Clara is left with far too many things to consider at all and no clue as to what to feel and when, when this spike of indignation and outrage at his callousness towards a person who just lost her brother demands her time, but said time is already split and stretched out between far too many tasks that are demanding her attention all at once, not just because he seems to have pushed the handling of the demoralized crowd off to her once again, when some parts of that very mind are still racing and processing the clues and traces of whatever might still be hiding in the darkness of these corridors as quickly as her own fear of a quick, unannounced death would let them move, but because turning to adress them involved looked away from _him_ , and these days, she never knows what he might be _doing_ if she let him out of her sight.

She never knew whether to be worried or unsettled or pissed-off, which in itself was enough to leave her mostly _frustrated_ before any of the other components featured into the mix, but the questioning little voices of all she wanted to be wouldn't let her be frustrated in peace for too long before they started questioning her in mocking tones – Didn't he _always_ use to whirr about the room with even _more_ frantic energy, uncontrollably touching things, pressing buttons and displaying little understanding of boundaries, or was that different because she could – or at least _thought_ she could – _rely_ on him buzzing about and prepare for that, was it not quite so hard to expect what to expect before he'd taken to this way of just... standing in a room and letting himself absorb it with those large, unfathomable eyes, never letting her know when he might stir and do something incredibly unlikely that would require quick-witted participation on her part – with the way he was inspecting that tidbit of the man's remains, she was almost worried she might have to sprint forward to keep him from _licking_ it, but it seemed that at the very least, centuries of experience with performing impromtu taste-tests on random substances, whether they happened to contain dead people or not, was seldom met with pleasant results, and merely contented himself with loudly sniffing at today's designated sample, which, given that it already looked barely tolerable to her as someone who dealt with him on a regular basis and knew that much of is inexplicable behavior did, ocassionally, tend to yield useful results, probably did little to calm down the rest of their small group, least of all the poor fellow's rather apalled sister, who watched in stunned disbelief as he mumbled some remarks on the consistency of the goop, turned around to face them and casually pulled out a hankerchief to sanitize his fingers with, reacting little to the woman's high, wordless gasp and its role a manifestation of just how little she could believe what was taking place before her eyes – Clara could not exactly blame her;

As much as she wished for this situation to end or proceed, if he were to ask her, she would not have denied that he brought the next thing that happened on himself, that he should have expected the recently bereaved lady to block his path as he gestured for them to leave, and proceed to stare at him accusingly with her tear-filled eyes; Everyone else in their small band was looking at the girl with heavy, affected faces.

"That. Was my brother!"

"I am aware of that, yes."

"You... you said not to go after him... you said he woud be fine! I was gonna go after him, and you told _me_ -"

"-what was most likely to keep you from wandering off. If we spilt up, whatever did this would just pick us off one by one." he stated, in a businesslike tone, before moving to step right past the distraught woman. It was, perhaps, telling that she did not have the heart to go after him or make him look at her in any other fashion, like, say, grabbing his arm, but simply turned in his direction, too daunted by his scowl and the harshness of his voice to pose any serious resistance, her voice small and broken: "But... what about him..."

At that, he sighed in exasperation, even though he did turn to face her. "This laboratory has at least 74 floors, and if we spend our time scouring it for people whose whereabouts and location we have no idea about, we will never get to the surface alive, and what ever escaped from down here will be let loose on the city above; For all we know, your brother has already been dead since before we even noticed that anything had gone wrong, and there was nothing we could do to begin with."

The woman's weepy protests did gain a little in intensity, if not much in streght. "My brother, my kind big brother that has looked after me all my life... – has been _eviscerated_ –"

"No.", he interrupted, with little regards or tact. When the victim's sister looked up, partially moving out of her closed-off, half-curled up posture in both confusion and schock at the further callousness she thought to see manifested in his brazen tone, he merely continued as if he were lecturing her: "He was _not_ eviscerated. Hasn't anyone here been paying the least bit of attention?" He gestured toward the young man's squashed remains on the ceiling with something that resembled casual annoyance. "Do you see any innards, or bones there? There's not even blood, just... goop, and the pattern it's splattered in, like he exploded from the inside out. He wasn't physically attacked, he was _liquified,_ the whole components of the body, transfigurated and rearranged! So think about it. Question: Why carry out such a complicated process and make such a flashy mess, when you could just use a raygun or something, no shortage of those around here. Answer: Because whatever did this has an ability that can be used in an easy, quick and remote way that also happens to do this. Why would it have such an ability? Anwer: Perhaps, because it needs to. Because maybe that's how it... _harvests_ something, something that will make it stronger with every victim that it kills. Therefore, I'd really appreciate it if none of you went waltzing straight into its arms, if you can help it!"

That shut her up.

She remained standing there, silently sobbing, as everyone else reluctantly began to move on ahead, unsure as they might be given the sight of her – and as they were beginning to pass her by, Clara took a deep breath, straightened herself up and summoned up her best impression of a calm, confident face, well-practiced as it was due to her line of work. At least this girl was someone she could more or less read, although few of the people in this corridor would have believed just how inwardly relieved she felt when it turned out that she had correctly anticipated that the younger woman, given her body language, would be receptive to a supportive hand being placed on her back as comforting gesture, and still seemed sufficiently open to, or perhaps even silently craving words of comfort, no matter which source they would be coming from; If she wasn't, she wouldn't have kept talking like that when she realized that the tall, unreadable man ahead of them wasn't going to provide any.

"...Listen... I know that this must be horrible for you. I know it must be hard. We spoke to your brother earlier at the presentation, we... heard about the dreams he had..." she began, cautiously weighing her words and their tone to match and uit what she could gauge from the other woman's face. "He spoke about you, too. I could tell that you two were very close, so... I'm certain that he would have wanted to you to be safe, to... get out of this place now."

"Then how? How? If you and this... this _man_ really met him, then how can he be so... How can he-"

That was most certainly _not_ the direction she'd hoped to steer this conversations toward – She didn't know if he conciously expected her to be like, his personal PR department, but between how he acted, and how she was, the things that were important to her and the things she couldn't ignore, she would probably wind up in that role one way or another, and that, too, frustrated her, because if she was going to wind up having to be his face to the world and explain him to people, it would at least help if she had the slightest clue of what he wanted her to communicate, or what he was even thinking – If she was to be honest, Clara had to admit that she could not speak with confidence when it came to any of this, but for the sake of the person beside her, she _had_ to: "He is... He's just acting that way because he is every bit as stressed out as anyone else here. He's trying to focus on finding a way to get us all out of here, those of us he _can_ get to in time, including you. You have to keep going... Believe me, he's doing the best he can."

"So you say."

And she wished she could say that it was the certain truth, and while it isn't, she really does want to believe, perhaps self-servingly, that it is a bit more than a lie anyways, something vaguely soaring above a mere guess, perhaps something more elusive than certainty, yet imbued with more meaning than a mere hunch, like a hope, a prayer, or a promise, that whatever else was floating around in the thick skull of the man who was walking before her, his dark clothing melting into the darkness, she would probably – hopefully – be in there somewhere, somehow.

(There were – quite a lot of things, storms and flurries of thoughts, cogwheels slowly clicking away at the problem at hand, sorting through various half-thawed threads of associations, foggy recollections of similar situations, tidbits of music that wouldn't shut up and half-finished treatises that had been in the making for years untold, a chaotic mess of various going ons with a few surprisingly focussed components and some parts where it was always raining;

And somewhere in the vastness, there was yet another surreally long blackboard, where yet another tally mark had been added to a very, very long line of these; In here, it was a truly unspectacular, thoroughly granted thing that her concern and support would be duly noted –

Of course she knew, she usually knew, more than she thought she knew, maybe not 'always', as she had once announced with that mysterious smile on her lips, but _most_ of the time, even when he couldn't afford to let it show, even when he was too lost to find it for himself –

And should her own dark days ever come, she might just come to find that he had not forgotten. )


	6. Appearances

He might seem imposing, wild and inaccessible at first, but if you give him time, he's a raw diamond.

He cleans up nicely, for once; He can look so _beautiful_ whenever he actually bothers to run a comb through his hair. He is one of these people who, through posture or body language or unflattering hairstyles, somehow manage to squander much of their natural appeal, or perhaps more like those girls who could look like a dozen distinct people just by going for a different shade of lipstick – there were those times, when he would stand up straight at his full height and let her get a good look at the broad sharpness of his frame, when their surroundings were crazy enough for that red lining to work as the simple, yet effective optical accentuation it was probably intended as, instead of something slightly-over-the-top that you'd expect to see on a stage performer, when he took the situation serious enough to speak with an imposing, velvety gravitas that immediately took over the entire room and fixed all glances onto himself;

She had surely noticed, and it wasn't as if she hadn't seen others notice it, too, Marian, Saibra, anyone who cared to look past the silly veil of first impressions; There was no _lack_ of things to notice – Those elegant hands, his sleek palms combined with fingers that were long, but even in breadth, powerful instead of spindly, and usually adorned with one or several gem rings that sparkled in the artificial lights of spaceships and underground complexes; His sleek waist and hips outlined by the dark fabric of his close-fitting pants when he placed his hands in his pockets, radiating practiced ease and an understated challenge;

There were his long, sinewy limbs that took up all the space wherever he chose to spread himself out, the sort of narrow, aquiline nose one would associate with a man of leadership, the edgy, yet refined construction of bones that made up his forehead, and what she was hesitant to refer to as "high aristocratic cheekbones", given that would probably compare that term to a large, festering pimple in terms of favorability, although it might have softened the blow if he let her get to the point in the description where she'd state that the uneven lines beneath probably balanced that out, as did the presence of his oddly rectangular lips as a little, distinctive trait that imbued his already striking visage with additional charisma.

Then, there's the voice that spills forth from those lips, that deep, gravelly wonder, with that very characteristic, gruff, dry tinge added by his accent, which, in an otherwise quiet room, with her disorderly emotions in an appropiately receptive state, was already quite enough by itself to get her uncomfortably bothered by the feeling of warm tingles in her center.

And, last but not least: The largest, most expressive eyes she could have conceived in her thoughts, sparkling with the sweetest of sadness, gray like treacherous, overcast april skies, of the sort that, depending on the lighting, could appear to contain the palest flicker of color, every bit as hard to place as he could be _,_ and every bit as beautiful, although he didn't know it _…_ but _of course_ , that idiot was so hung up on those blasted eyebrows that he never noticed what was right beaneath them, and she was afraid that it might be slightly her fault, too.

For her most precious, and at the same time, the most bittersweet thing about this form of his, the meaning that it always holds, the truth it incessantly reminds her of, is that he took it _because of her_ , not to have it please or charm her, or anyone else, not even primarily because she contributed to his survival, because she was there to be the first thing he perceived before even the realization of existence, but that it had been a sign of his trust in her, his belief that, after all she had seen of his secrets, she could handle him just as he was, and guide him through his time of weakness –

And then, she had gone and squandered it all on a simple misunderstanding, because she didn't want to be the one who got it wrong, because she was uncertain and confused –

It was never a matter of what he looked like; She had seen him worn down from the Time War, witnessed his wasted form on Trenzalore, and held him all the same; It was her own inability to predict every thing he was going to do and know every single thought in his head that she couldn't forgive, and when she took it out on him, there was certainly no shortage of passive-agressiveness on his part, but ultimately, he took all the blame onto himself and assumed that it was all his mistake, thinking himself a ridiculous, deluded old man misjudging his place, expecting too much, giving up the person he had loved even after being trapped without her for enough time for empires to rise and fall, the person he had once taken into his arms like they had never parted, because he had never gotten to hear any of her sheer outrage at the mere _suggestion_ that their connection had never gone beyond a shallow, superficial infatuation with his exterior.

When the other girls her age had plastered their rooms with the images of fresh-faced boyband-singers, she had hidden away with her books and only let herself be moved to strong feelings of awe by the beauty of the written word, the thought of ideas and philosophies; When others were aimlessly dreaming their days away, she had known from the beginning what she wanted to do and dedicated herself to her studies, while they were partying their nights away, she stayed to look after two children who shared her life's pain.

She never had the slightest interest in pretty young men, but she had loved him so much that she still loved him even when he looked like one of these;

It wasn't merely that she had looked past some surface that wasn't quite her type; Rather, she had grown to love that wide nose and that square, oversized chin at the same time as she had grown her affection for the soul that lived within, somewhere behind the lies and the rehearsed glittering of his Aura; She loved him because he was the man who had peeled off her masks before she even knew they were there; She loved that ridiculous dark quiff and that dorky nasal voice because they were _him,_ and she had a place in her heart that would always be set aside for those lively cholorophyll greens, his protracted, heavily-amended metaphors and the sheer sight of him, hanging in a swing-like construction like a strange fruit in a rainforest of cables and wires, with everything about him covered in engine grease, from his shoes, to his dark waistcoat, the once shiny golden chain leading to his watch, his silly bowtie, those dark-rimmed glasses and that radiant, open smile that was ever inviting –

Regardless, she would have to extremely resent any notion that she might not be able to do the same with this new set of outward decorations that, just for the record, was much closer to her personal preferences for what little such superficial things even mattered to her –

But never were those little cracks and discrepancies between what she aspired to be, and what she actually succeeded at being more apparent than in the belated realization that she had brought this upon herself, because of her pathological need to have everything take place on her own terms, her inability to accept the spontaneous and accept the unforseen, because she wanted to have her cake and eat it, too, present him to her family as she had done in all those only slightly truncated stories she told him were unrelated, made-up pretense without having to breach that boundary once and for all, that she had acted as if their time together could be trusted to go on forever and failed to make use of the offer contained in that brief misunderstanding – Back then, when he mistakenly thought she was asking him to be hers, he just agreed without thinking, like it was just the long overdue stating of the obvious, and, judging by his incoherent mumblings about manuals, even seemed ready to get on with the lovemaking right then and there, and she'd just dismissed it, not expecting that they might be separated, or that he might feel compelled to act and clarify the situation himself before she got around to it –

And now, he still takes her out into the nights, allows her to wrap herself in the most luscious finery from both their wardrobes, to sparkle alongside him in the city lights.

He leads her, with an elegant, gentlemanly taking of her hand, into restaurants and festivities and before sights that have nothing to envy from these, for he understands that both their exquisite appetites prefer their dinner with an extra serving of thrills, and even she cannot have remained unaware of this for much longer –

And if she had not known better, she might have been tempted to suspect that just maybe, just sometimes, in certain ways if never in the obvious ones, he silently indulged in seeing her at her most radiant, glittering at the world with her bracelets and rings, adorning him with the envy of men and women alike with her actions and words, and ever so deliberately dosed, if not necessarily sparingly, allowing him the sight of her awed face, when he outdit himself in the orchestrasting of her entertainment, advertizing the sights in a way that almost allowed her to pretend that he was her showy, exuberant weekend-lover presenting her an extravagant idea for a date or little romantic vacation, (which was, incidentally, just what he sometimes called when he was out of her earshot, where his foolishness could do no harm, and not even wistfully, but brimming with life - "Beat _that_ for a date!") or when he faced down the shadows as her champion, always the one to speak the magic words or defy the nameless horrors, and she was struck, for the tiniest of moments, by how he looked sort of heroic and knightly, no matter how quickly the obnoxiousness of his incredibly lame puns or the sight of his ridiculous, improvised weapons moved to dissipate that impression.

And somewhere along the way, they would walk through the unsuspecting masses with their arms linked, and some attentive soul would pick up on what they themselves had been so quick to deny from the very beginning, and perhaps, suspect that he was some lucky, wealthy bastard taking his pretty young bonnie out for a walk, and they would just let them stare and inwardly smirk to themselves, knowing that they were so much more than that, and in no need of such a silly, superficial thing when they had this rare connection they found with each other, best friends, kindred spirits, the most efficient pair of comerades and mutual muses, each other's earth and sky, heaven and hell and nothing in between –

But _in addition_ to that, and in _no_ kind of mutual exclusion, existed the fact that they both really welcomed the flattery, but the motions of that delight were cursed to take place under wraps, for each closed off from the other, and rarely ever without a twinge of guilt.

In cool nighttime air, the heat inside them slowly simmers.


	7. Residues

Clara Oswald is well aware of the phenomenon commonly known as pangs of jealousy.

They're not a far-fetched possibility around this man she tends to be around of.

She obviously knew of Professor Song and his other marriages, she kept tabs on his offhanded mentions and anecdotes to puzzle together images of everything from rather random unscheduled lip-collisions, to brief love affairs that were often tragically cut short or constrained by impossible circumstances, to specific names he'd sometimes mention, the "Sarah"s, "Peri"s and "Romana"s he'd speak of with fond respect or the "Jo", "Charley" and "Rose" that would sometimes tinge his voice and face with varying degrees of yearning wistfulness.

It didn't take much imagination to speculate that some of them might have reacted with a bit of jealousy, it was only human, after all. Others perhaps, were themselves people that did not like to be tied down in any way and thus, didn't expect it of him, either.

Where did Clara fall on that scale? Well, she was 'human' as well, but she was supposed to be a mature person. She never expected to have been the first one to have traveled with him, and understood that there had been a long before, and that there would be a long after; She hoped so, at least, given that the alternatives would be outliving him or leaving him to a miserable future. There was also that little factoid that she wasn't officially supposed to be anything of his, as flimsy as the denial had once gotten in places and, at times, still got, and even if she was, she could understand that there was obviously a time before he'd met (or become aware) her, (even if they could make it their "now" rather easily thanks to their nifty time machine), and back then, he'd be quite free to do things like marry the (then) queen of England (and get snogged senseless by her), she'd even be his maid of honor and throw some glitter for the occasion! ...but a point would come at which her smile would crack, her emotions would force their way past her rational mind and she'd wind up rolling her eyes... or skip to the eyes-rolling right away if he situation was surreal enough which, with him, it often was.

To be frank, she would not pretend that she, in any way, enjoyed to see him kiss other people, or even having to hear that he had a granddaughter, and thus, at some point, spawned at last two generations of offspring with someone who wasn't her.

She could not guarantee that what was true in quiet moments would hold true in the heat of a moment, but when she was at her desk doing work or contemplating the day sitting on her bed, when she could think things through completely and , she could, at least on an abstract, intellectual level, say that she was _fine_ with Professor Song, Elizabeth, Tasha. If they were parts of his story, if they had helped him on his long path and kept him in one piece so he could even _get_ to her, if they were part of the reason he was how he was, then she was _grateful_ towards this Rose, Charley or Romana, even the Master, as much as Clara despised that evil creature in the end.

And him?

Well, it was not in any way correct to call him a jealous person. He wasn't the type to resent others for their happiness, or dismiss and devalue something because it didn't match his personal taste, wasn't suited to him, or simply something he couldn't have; (although it could be hard to tell nowadays... and actually, before, too, with the way he'd sometimes belittle everything in sight when he was sufficiently bored or frustrated) If someone he cared about was happy, especially if he could _still_ contribute to giving them happiness, then he was able to do what many took for granted when it was the pain or someone they loved, and share it as if it were his own, to, in a sense, live vicariously through them.

Despite, or maybe in part _because_ of what his vanity and general haughtiness about his intellect may suggest, he didn't really have that high an opinion of themselves and odds are, if he'd talked to a person long enough to be seriously interested in them, he'd already have a complex bundle of guilt about supposedly ruining their lives, regardless of whether his actual impact on their lives under account of the circumstances was actually negative, positive or overall... mixed.

Then, there was the matter of his age – given that Time Lords were simply a relatively long-lived species, it was more or less unavoidable that nearly _anyone_ he came across would be vastly younger than himself; (Then, of course, there had been Romana, with whom there had _still_ been a significant disparity in age and experience, if, to his embarrassment, _not_ in engineering skills) Other Time Lords had been somewhat unavailable as of late, and even back when they weren't, that stagnant society with its largely stuffy, detached and condescending people were something he'd run away from, and never felt the slightest bit inclined to return to.

It has to be said that sometimes, the best indicator of who someone is and what is important to them is not where they come from and the people they got stuck with, but the people they _chose_ to surround themselves with, those who caught their attention, the ones that evoked empathy, sympathy or admiration in them.

Even if he didn't have that particular fondness for their home world, after certain points in time, humanity was simply spread out all over the universe, and one was likely to encounter them wherever they went. So if he went out there and met people, some of which then manage to impress him, chances are that some of them will be human either way; While he had his fair share of Alzarians, Trakenites and tin dogs tagging along and was always open to all forms of life, as it stood, most of his friends were human, what he'd call co-workers or comrades, much of what he'd come to consider his family and, in the end, probably shared more in common with that with most of his actual blood relatives... So it should not have been surprising that most of his lovers had been human as well, simply because most of the people around him were.

Both the species and age differences were just something he'd have to deal with as a consequence of the life he led –

but it certainly contributed to the way he was always very quick to give them up for the sake of their happiness, more so than even selflessness could justify.

Still, there were always circumstances that made it easier than others.

If he really _liked_ suitor option B, if he was courageous, dependable and willing to compromise, everything she needed and what he himself wished he _could_ be, and, just to top it off, the happy couple made it clear that they still wanted him in their lives as their friend, champion, or even a part of their family, well, perfect! Time would just let the inconvenient feelings dissipate on both sides dissipate, he'd come to care in a different capacity, concern himself with giving them happiness, and find someone else for... the other stuff, and it all works out fine for everyone involved.

Another sort of comfort or consolation prize that... at least allowed him to exit the stage with his ego intact, or his comfortable illusions, should he feel the need to indulge in them in some lonely, pitiful moment. A lookalike, a promising young activist explicitly described as a younger version of him, a suspiciously loud-and-brusque-yet-heroic warrior king, an actual duplicate... he could deal with that, he could deal, and still tell the portions of himself that were childish enough to think in such terms that he'd still "won", or could have, or at least had a confirmation that she'd... liked him, too. He could deal. The flip side of that coin was a sharp pain that twisted the knife further, a sense of betrayal he had no business feeling, distraught over losing a chance that might have been real, yet hurt that the other person would chose an 'easier' suitor, basically similar but without all those confusing, edgy alien bits to deal with, even when that was exactly what he'd wanted to give them, even personally orchestrated... and that, too, just affirmed his belief that he was right to leave.

But one shouldn't need an 'ego boost' to cope with doing-the-obviously-right-thing to begin with. And maybe a better, more honest person wouldn't.

There was, however, a difference between choosing to do what he probably should, and being able to turn off one's feelings with a button; He was rather like Clara in that respect, although she'd probably like to contest that, given that his own encounters with the green eyed beast tended to be _amazingly_ more blatant, to the point that they were moderately annoying rather than flattering.

He did only slightly mind when she got cozy with any of the locals of a place they were going to leave soon anyway, or heard her mention going on dates in-between trips, although he was not exactly beneath a little playful sabotage, but that was because he was an arrogant jackass and didn't see any of this as a 'serious threat'.

Anyone who legitimately drew her attention away from him was another story.

Oh sure, he might make a token effort to play nice, but when he found a pretext not to hold back, ("Must be a robot!") she _would_ wind up practically smelling the testosterone, or whatever the Time Lord equivalent of that delightful little chemical happened to be.

Even when he was perfectly willing to bow out gracefully, it took a conscious effort to dial down the smartass and stop competing. Part of it was probably just being a showoff by nature, for its own sake, before impressing anyone specific even came into the picture.

Something he also was: Desperate, at times. Like when he did not want to lose the first speckle of thorough happiness he had grasped after the Time War, or whenever he was around Clara, because he was _always_ desperate when it came to her, more than he would, or even could ever show.

She was the person who brought out that side in him, the heated and passionate bordering on obsession – Because she is the one who had witnessed his secrets and seen him as he really was, at first, through accident and necessity, later, because he trusted her, then, because he _wanted_ her to know. For the first time in his long life, he not only trusted, but _wanted_ someone to know exactly who he really was, wanted her to see him, only him, all of him, from his unpolished surface to his rotten core.

She had stayed at his side to support him, through the days of boon and the lean times, and while she did struggle with him, she never left his side for long. She was the existence that appeared before him in his days of doubt and darkness, and each time, she had her way to stir the embers of all that was still _alive_ inside of him, and this was why he kept wanting her all for himself, wanting all of her, always, endlessly _wanting_ even long after he had given up.


	8. Paths

_"The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story"_

_-Peter S. Beagle, in 'The Last Unicorn'_

There had never been room for any pretense of "before", not for either of them. They had been entwined from the very beginning, feeling and breathing the evidences and consequences of the other's existence in this world all around them all the way from where their paths first began, on the opposite sides of the milky way, the eventual inevitability of their coming together in an universe that contained them both sending ripples deep into the past and far into the future.

It had, however, taken them both some time to connect the dots and notice just that, so that period of unawareness might be used to pinpoint or define something like "a time before their paths crossed", before he had taken notice of the the girl with those clear and unhesitating eyes, whose seeming certainty in questions of what she wanted was bound to leave a firm impression on an aimless vagabond like himself –

Although she had begun to guide the course of her life onto clearly defined rails from a young age, studiously strivng towards the top spots of her priority list, she had spent much of that time absorbing, first her mother's tales, stories and anecdotes, then books and articles, from physical depictions and examinations on the subject, to guidebooks by amateurs and professional psychologists alike, because, of course, you could never be prepared enough, and all these things weren't just helpful for one's own application, but as another part of a clearly laid out model of how this world was supposed to work and what drove the people inside them to their actions, which could then be used to predict or analyze, and ultimately dispense sufficiently helpful counsel, comfort to the people around her; That there might have been a component beyond wanting to help and get things right, to hear the sound of her own voice sprouting clever things and be looked up to by her friends, to join into the discussions of the adults around her and have them praise her father for his mature and sensible daughter... that did not occur to her at the time, although she was certainly aware of, and deliberate in her cultivation of an objective, perhaps more detached perspective that was closer to the undiminished yet unembellished truth of what existed out there.

Regardless, casual conversation and the feedback garnered from that was the most she had gathered in terms of feedback data; In her high school days, she had been concerned with things other than the practical application of those ideas, and the relative degree of maturity found in most of her classmates gave her little incentives to change that; It wasn't that she looked down on anyone who wasn't excessively shallow or pointlessly air-headed, and even those cases, she could calmly identify as a mere case of being need of some growing up; Rather, she usually wound up being the big-sister like figure in any given group of her peers, the sort you could always count on or help when you were being harassed or needed help with your homework, but perhaps perceived as a little too distant and serious to address in a completely casual manner.

While she did have a few admirers, they were mostly resigned to doing their admiring from a distance, thinking her too distant, too focused to be attained.

When the subject came up between the other students, the general consensus was that the person who could sway her heart, and more importantly, have any hope of keeping a tight hold on it when they had to share it with the thinkers of old, the heroes of myth and the lure of the foreign lands her faraway thoughts existed in, would have to be cut from the same cloth as her, a displaced old soul, and an interesting list of other requirements in which to match her, although no one could be sure of its exact contents; In all of her life, there were very few people that Clara Oswald had ever made privy to all of her secrets, in most cases, it might even be a fairly useful working hypothesis to say "none".

Although she was reasonably popular and generally well-liked (but never one of those focal points that stood in the middle of gossiping crowds, wearing the clothes everyone else was trying to imitate), she rarely had any really close friends her own age, seeing as her interests were never very much like those of most other school girls, either. She couldn't really relate to their squealing outrage over various actors or musicians that she covertly found rather dreadful even then.

After school, she went straight for university. No dawdling, no 'orientation phase', no party break, her decision had been made a long time ago and ever since, she had merely been waiting for the moment in time when she would physically set her plans into motion – While she still had her mother's keepsake book in the topmost drawer underneath her desk and her yearning for the wider world stashed away in her dreams (and unaware that this choice would indirectly lead to said dreams being shelved, and then, much later, reprised beyond her wildest fantasies, as if to reward her willingness to wait), but, first things first, even if her relatives _wouldn't_ most likely just _scream_ if it occurred to her to do it the other way around and go chasing pipe dreams before obtaining some proper, solid education that would guarantee her a future; Those were _her_ priorities, too, having things assured and reasonable expectations of employment to fall back on, and really, her father's at the time quite newly acquired wife had not scored any points for assuming otherwise the very moment she's ever first _mentioned_ her intentions of seeing the world at some point.

It wasn't just the _nerve_ of her to dare opine on this, to squeeze herself in like she somehow had a say in this like she was actually trying to pose as a replacement for the most irreplaceable person, Clara was already familiar with that and the usual game of trying not to be... allergic to the woman and see things that aren't there, what constituted a rather particular kind of insult were the however implied allegation that she lacked ambition, or hid behind modesty, because she wanted to become a teacher, in spite of how she could supposedly "do anything" with grades like hers. That was _personal_ and evoked spite she didn't want to be capable of, but couldn't quite put away in any way that would have been honest and consistent.

It wasn't just the ridiculing as her chosen path as some sort of settling for less, that she _dared_ doubt the ambition that drove her forward every day – as much as that, in itself constituted a deadly insult to her as someone who very much pursued what she wanted with all her energy, even if it wasn't as likely to bring her money, power and glory as destinations that were more commonly associated with "ambition"; Maybe the things she wanted weren't what others wanted, or what other might arrogantly decree to be what she _should_ want, but she did really want it and pursue it along clear, systematic priorities – yet, as far as that went, that was something she could at least defend from others through outrage, to show them all up with every bit of success and fulfillment she'd derive from her work, whether anyone else could appreciate or acknowledge that or not, without even necessarily having to admit to being annoyed – but something about the words, especially that bit about 'everything else she could do with her grades' , had tugged at some further wound, a deeper thing that was not as easily dismissed, because it did not come with any such clear solution she could invest into to work towards make it all go away, a paradoxical little feeling that had unwelcomely entered her thoughts, breached her consciousness once it escaped from those parts and stretches of her being that she hadn't even known she had been sealing away; Not until she met the man who watered them with care and fed them harsh fertilizer.

It was a thought born from the same place that had birthed her desire to travel and see the world to begin with, a hunger for more that was not quietly slumbering, but creating ripples and waves as it dreamed away wherever she had stuffed it when she put it away for the moment: Just because she had chosen one path, that didn't mean that she had been completely blind to any others, or never even considered a world beyond her immediate surroundings. Of course she did, of course she had; Try as she might to suppress it, her eyes had gone wide when she'd first sorted through the university's pamphlets, leaflets and its long, associated list of all the wildly different things one could mayor in nowadays, and, for brief moments, she had imagined herself in many different roles and futures that each of those different possible paths could lead her into. She could go for business management and become the head of a large company, putting her smarts and dominant personality to good use to cleave herself a path through that dog-eat-dog, male-dominated world; She considered computer science _exactly_ because she didn't know the first thing about computers, (given that her need of quiet one-on-one entertainment was mostly satisfied by her books) but sort of always wished she did, if only she would find the time to indulge her curiosity as far as it would go. There was something inside her that longed for those possibilities, that wanted to feel and experience – well, not 'everything' per se, there were plenty of things in the world that she didn't have the slightest interest in, but, of the things she chose to have in her life, as much as possible. Her dreams of seeing foreign lands were yet another expression of that, and as much as she tried not to, she did lament the paths not taken, the things she still wanted even though she'd given them up in favor of others that she wanted even more;

Sometimes (Oh the irony) she wished she could live ten lives instead of just one, so she could be born in ten different cities, be raised in ten different cultures, have ten different professions, live and experience ten different times, read ten lifetimes' worth of books... and fall in love with the same person every single time.

Because, of all the stories she had read or heard, the one that had impacted her the most at this point in her life was that of her parents.

She found Sunday school quite entertaining, alright, it was interesting to see how the same old stories with emotionally ambiguous, undefined characters could come to mean so much, and yet, so different things to many people; But any belief she might ever have had in impossible heroes, fairytales, silly ghost stories and rubish such as "fate" or "destiny" had been short-lived at best; She certainly wouldn't spent her life hung up on unrealistic sappy love stories as the media commonly tried to sell them – then again, she didn't have to, because she had at least one love story that she knew to be _real_ , as surely truthful as the fact that she'd been conceived, that she _ever_ existed in this world to move about and speak and touch things; The story of her parents was not an idealized puff of smoke no one could actually attain, but a honest, undeniable glimpse at what people could actually attain in this world, if they were ready to prove themselves when it counted, a "soulmate" not as something that falls into your lap if you wait long enough , but something that can be made to happen through the right choices and actions.

Clara Oswald, as a general principle, did not wait for happiness to be given; Rather, she would take off running and chase after it for herself, or at the very least, those obscure keys and magical doorways through which that elusive substance might be acquired and imported.

Sure, she prided herself of being a conscious citizen of the 21st century, of trying to see past people's sweet-talk and decorations right to their intentions; As an university student, she found herself in a very different microcosm than the one at school, a place filled with interesting, accomplished people full of potential, but also immature youths; Even then, she tried her best to be self-sufficient and make her own way in life, so she worked in a bar to support herself instead of relying on her father's money or burdening anyone else (although getting away from his wife was _also_ an incentive to start living on her own as soon as possible), and in that environment, the practiced use of her charms became yet another thing to be understood and mastered so she could excel at it and use it as a means of controlling the world around her. She learned to flirt and mesmerize, to keep people guessing at all times and add an enchanting tinge of warmth to her steely demeanor from her school days, but also how to apply the appropriate caution and never make herself too obvious, to even turn those hard-to-hide quirks of hers into a strategical advantage:

Clara Oswald, professional tease.

It was _because_ , and not _despite_ her way of wanting it all out of life that she found ways to squeeze those pursuits somewhere between work and her studies, sacrificing less essential things like relaxation if she had to, and while she did have a couple of fleeting encounters, silently nursed crushes on some of the professors and even one or two people she felt might have become _more,_ a spirited, if flighty girl with streaks of pink in her hair and a man with a proud preference for black turtlenecks and philosophic conversations, but when it came to taking things to a serious territory, she still very much believed in that story, a solid, founded belief she saw as justified by her very existence; Details that didn't fit in, addendums introduced by later events such as her father's remarriage were not even swept under the rug, but as things that she would do better, things she would _get right_ when her chance came; She'd decided that when she'd really fall in love, she would fall in love once and forever and never say these three words to a second person ever again or ever before, without even _considering_ any kind of affairs or parallel constructs as something she'd have to think about as long as she didn't plan on cheating on anyone, and she certainly didn't, nor did she see how things could complicate themselves without her consent, after all, it should be perfectly possible given that it already happened once:

Boy meets girl, girl saves boy's life and really impresses him in the process, boy shows up at girl's doorstep with a massive crush, boy and girl come to see that hey actually happen to have a lot in common, and at the end, he uses a token from their first meeting to affirm the value she, and she alone has for him, and she'll know he's the right one by the way he makes her feel special, like he has made her the center of his world whenever they were together...

And in some ways, that idea of hers wasn't completely unfounded; Of course things could go like this, for some people, maybe even most people at least in theory, people who didn't fall in love with a person from a book and found all the wonders they could ever want in their immediate vicinity. But not _all_ people.

The world was big, the world was unfair, the world was full of strange corners, dark alleyways and inhabited shadows; It was a place where unpredictable, random events might waltz in unannounced at any time of the day, and sometimes, boy doesn't meet girl until after he's been through a long and convoluted story with shadowy beginnings and an uncertain end. Sometimes, girl saves boy's life and makes a big impression of him in the process, but thanks to the wonders of time travel, she has no clue that she has done, or will do that by the time boy shows up at her doorstep with a massive crush already in place, and they both begin circling each other in a wild courtship dance of suspicion. Sometimes, boy and girl don't meet until they are already man and woman and have to confront the circumstances that made them that way. Sometimes people misunderstand, people lose their temper, people grow apart, people get separated by accidents, and sometimes, people just die, with no greater purpose and narrative behind it. Sometimes you run into the wrong guy first. Sometimes, you run into whoever is suitable for this segment of your life but not necessarily the next. Sometimes feelings refuse to be controlled, whether it is to make yourself like someone who should by all means be the right, ideal choice, or whether we can't stop loving someone tainted and flawed. Sometimes, people try their best to get things right, but cannot make each other stay because they simply don't want the same things out of life, without either of the having to be an irredeemable asshole for that. Sometimes people even part ways even though neither of them really wishes to part because neither feels ready for the other yet, and even rarer, sometimes these same people and end up at each other's doorsteps again and again, time after time, no matter what convoluted circles, spirals and pretzels their paths have led them down in the meantime.

But none of that was a real, tangible part of Clara's life yet.

And that was her, before _he_ came, some dreams shelved, some plans derailed, but still very certain that she was consistently living her life along the guidelines and priorities she had laid out; In the end, what put a stop to her dreams of working as a teacher _and_ traveling the world was the very same thing that, much later, eventually made her give up the traveling once she actually got to it: The thought that a friend in need would be better off if she staid behind.

Not that she had given up, though; She may not yet have had access to the luxury of a time machine that would allow her to do it all at once, but she _never_ had the intention of giving any of it up, her mother's book remained in her drawer waiting to be filled with mementos of future travel, and her diploma was right beneath it, waiting for her first class of students. She would get to it eventually, for it was what sh wanted to do - She had good reasons to want it and she was damn proud of them: Being an English teacher was probably the closest one could get to those times her mother, her _actual_ mother had read or told her stories as a child, and somehow get paid for it, and perhaps as such, a more systematic, posher version of that, but at heart, rather the same thing, in the role of a caregiver who'd lead those malleable young individuals full of potential through the harsh experience that adolescence could be as un-stifled in their personalities and as harnessed in their potential as possible. She knew very well how harsh it could be, when the sudden loss of her mother turned what was already an unsteady time of transformations and transitions into the most horrible feeling of having nowhere left to turn to, no one to share their thoughts with, adrift and horribly lost like a wayward boat that had been cut loose from the harbor, waiting to sink with no one around to recor it or retain the memory, alone with the painful awareness that the person who normally came and found her, the person who promised to find her every time would never look for her again... The structuring influence of coming to school every day had at least given her something to focus on, small, compartmentalized tasks in the scope of which everything could be perfect and alright even if her life as a whole wasn't. Throwing herself into her studies had given her a way to take back control of her life, to do something other than just curl up with a book and retreat into herself, to move forward even through her tears, and through her example, become for others what her mother had been for her, and spare them the experience, the sensation of endless fall, at least to an extent, and in that way, it would be as if Eleanor Allison Oswald were still physically affecting the world, doing what she was always best at doing – Although nothing of her dynamic, self-aware consciousness remained in this world and no new pages would be added to her stories, there was still a lifetime's worth of what she had left behind in _information_ , the static, hollow negative of her imprint on the world as it could be reconstructed from all she had ever communicated _._ Words, statements, expressions of feelings and beliefs, from which some traits could be abstracted and packed into neat symbols of sound and language, memories of patterns of what she would do in various situations, what she might do in any given one _,_ preserved in memories, blueprints, genes, _recipes,_ which, given physical vessels or willing channelers to act upon the world as embers of her will, and the chance to act as such alone made this path worth choosing, given that this was probably the closest experience to encountering her that was left in this world after her death.

And then, there was the aspect of a mentor's standpoint - Clara had loved books ever since she was a little girl so it just fit, from an angle as simple as working with something she loved and wanting to share her passions, to acquaint others the way the enjoyment of a story could increase if you knew to appreciate the detail and craftsmanship that had gone into creating it. The power of words to convey revolutionary ideas change minds and send shock waves through societies and how to use it as your tool and make yourself heard.

She recalled some distinct experiences she had not too long after she became able to read stories by herself (which was earlier than you'd perhaps expect), when she would go to gush about them to her family or the other kids; It was, perhaps, the definitive moment that first led her to notice that her ability to spot patterns, draw connections and pay attention to detail was anything beyond the usual, and with it, to this feeling that she might not really be suited to the world in her immediate surroundings. She would notice all those little patters and ironies in a story, the structure and architecture of how it was constructed and arranged or, in less fortunate cases, just plain holes and inconsistencies, and when she went to share that with the people around her, she got only confusion or placating smiles and nods in reply, and was forced to make the harsh conclusion that many of the people she very much wanted to keep looking up there would never understand – Her mother and gran each told her, in different ways, that this meant she was somehow 'gifted', but at the time, it did not feel like a 'gift' at all, merely a reason to feel alone and misplaced – and the experience certainly influenced how she handled her charges, but also the path she would take, when it was a book that showed her a way to put into words what her expansive, yet still immature mind had long understood, but not quite processed.

The person who ultimately did her the favor of finding the words to make sense of that hazy cloud of unordered feelings was a long dead man from another country, reaching through to her using the pages of a book: Michael Ende's "Momo". So there was the strange young girl with her gift for _listening_ , to simply give people's words the space they needed to lead to epiphanies and support them through her mere presence (an ability that Clara certainly wished she could have), being shown the secrets of time by the old, yet young master of its domain, and waking up after the year that the words to describe those sights had needed to mature within her, finding herself in a strange, changed world where all her friends had been led astray by the villains, alone with no one to turn to, and worse, no one to tell of the wonders she had seen, and it was at this point of the book that both Momo, and Clara (from outside of the pages) arrived at the conclusion that even the most precious treasures could become a curse if you had no one to share them with (an important insight that would come in rather handy later in her life). She also familiarized herself with the man's other works, most notably "The Neverending Story", and while she was quite awed at the time, and never stopped admiring the wealth of imagination found in those books, she later concluded that she didn't necessarily agree with all of the philosophies presented therein; Clara was all for approaching children as emergent individuals very much capable of deeper thoughts rather than unfinished half-beings whose opinions were to be dismissed so they could be shaped into something useful, but she also came to feel that the naivety and supposed "innocence" of childhood (that, in reality, was just what the veil of nostalgia plastered over careless cruelty born from ignorance) was nothing to be romanticized or idealized, but a _hurdle_ that was a simple result of the inexperience that adults were to compensate for to allow the child to otherwise participate in life as best as they could at their stage of maturity.

It was also around that time that she first came into contact with the books of Amelia Williams with their themes of feeling out of place, chasing to fulfill one's dreams in a harsh, unfair world and finding the particular beauty in half-broken, dysfunctional things, and Clara came to love them right from the captivating wordings of their introductory paragraphs that had drawn her in immediately. While Mrs. Williams was best known for her work on books for children or adolescents, like the brilliant "Summer Falls", Clara's favorite was one of her more serious works, a thick, more obscure door-stopper that the author had composed late in life. From her later point of view as someone who engaged in the analysis of literature for a living, it's most notable particularities were perhaps the way it recounted the life stories of the four protagonists from their shared childhood in a little English village late into their adult lives, often recounted using clever, non-obvious techniques including short, artsy interludes, anachronic order and the presentation conflicting accounts from multiple, possibly equally skewed viewpoints, and a few impressive twists, one for example including the protagonist's devoted husband in the 'future' chapters, and the question of how he comes about – in fact, the character in question is introduced quite early, as one of the two barely distinct boys that seem to exist as generic friends for the principal character to emote towards, but if you look back at the earlier chapters after the big reveal, you'll notice that he was always there to support her and listen to her various troubles, a fact that the reader is probably intended to notice roughly when the protagonist herself does.

There is certainly much to be analyzed, it is the sort of book that one might need to read twice to catch all the hints and parallelism once more, with clarity, and had prepared two different layers of ideas and impressions for the first and second read through to make that work rewarding by way of allowing for many belated realizations, but what spoke to Clara the most when she read it for the very first time, with her analytical skills present but as of then not quite as honed, were probably the engaging characters – not so much the main character herself, although Clara did like her and emphasize with her in some ways, such as her love for misunderstood artists and her desire for something beyond her orderly little world, they were ultimately rather different – While she preferred order and control, the book's protagonist was rather wild and hated to be structured or tied down in any way and a definite rebel; She was a cool idea for a book, but had she been real, Clara would probably have found her and her friends to be rather reckless and irresponsible at times, with only husband-guy to provide a babysitter of sort for the other tree, although he was ever so easily dragged along by the others.

The one character that really captivated her at the time was the de-facto _deuteragonist_ , whom the book named as "Jonathan Smythe". While protagonist-girl did briefly consider him for a summer fling in high school before she got together with the afore mentioned husband-guy (and Jonathan himself wound up with an impossibly glamorous wife, later revealed to be one and the same with protagonist-girl's even crazier, somewhat troubled older sister from the earlier chapters – the fourth main character), their overall bond was probably better described as two children who met on the playground and decided to go make mischief together; While he disclosed little about himself, it seemed that he was also by himself, also didn't quite fit in, and, like protagonist-girl, had a keen eye for the going-ons that everyone around them just overlooked or lacked the courage and fortitude needed to refrain from denying a proven reality with uncertain, impossible consequences – Later on, they both have to deal with the various consequences of the fact that neither of them are children anymore.

And since Clara wasn't one, either, she wouldn't go as far as to wish or hope that this might happen to her, too, that she might meet a stranger just like herself with whom she could share her thoughts and observations, her passions and her lunacies, although the thought was obviously worth treasuring. As it turned out, this would be the first in a long line of things she had tried to control, or give up, but wound up happening anyways.

While the prominence of this general type of character in Mrs. Williams' works had many a loyal fan suspecting that she might have based them on a real person, perhaps "the one that got away", or an actual, close life-long friend of hers whose identity had been lost to obscurity, but never in her wildest dreams would Clara have suspected that she'd actually get to _meet_ the inspiration behind them... and, first impressions be damned, find him to be significantly less Peter Pan and a lot more Holden Caulfield, stubbornly wiping the graffiti from school property, rather lost and fallen by the wayside, an underachieving dropout fleeing the certainty of things he could no longer change on a destructive trajectory, manifesting his refusal to become part of the phoniness and fakery in the world around him in obstinate, at times rather counterproductive ways that could come off as rather random, given that he had not completely managed to stave off the infestation of his world's haughty hypocrisy himself, which, as Clara never thought she'd ever know from personal experience, was simply far too easy to slip into if you had been gifted with mixed blessing of being an incredible liar.

That cheeky brat... here they were, a perfectionist English teacher and a rebellious little miscreant all grown up, order versus chaos; They should have been natural enemies, but somehow they weren't, because sometimes, chaos needs someone to rein it in and tell it to be sensible, and sometimes, order needs something to challenge it and push it to its limits so it doesn't become trapped in stagnation, and after a while, they came to realize that they are bound together, just like light cannot be without shadow.

She had imagined "Jonathan" as a savvy, fearless boy who had all the rules of the world figured before most adults had, when she probably should have been picturing a paranoid, uncouth little thing that shivered in the dark just as anyone else and probably rarely left the house without wearing a smelly garland of garlic around his neck to ward off vampires from under the bed.

He just smirked when she said that, or implied as much as she could without revealing something that she could never tell him, that, in more ways than one, what he had spent centuries looking for had been at his side all along.

"I'm never going to live that one down, am I? Even the best researcher gets the occasional false positive, that's what the process of peer review is for, in other words, what I got _you_ for..." - as dismissive or irresponsible as that statement could have been taken, it did imply that he considered her a 'peer' of sorts, although this did not occur to her until later - "And for that matter, Vampires _are_ for real, although the garlic thing is complete and utter rubbish."

"What? Seriously? _Vampires_?"

And just like that, he'll turn her around, from rolling her eyes to curious and exciting, seeing the seasoned wanderer that had sprung up in the place of the boy recount his past encounters with a variety of fearsome creatures with a cheeky edge unchanged by the years, naming various variants of bloodsucking monster and adding his speculations on just how, or why the local pudding-brains might have concocted the common myths from them, including, apparently, the ones he himself had heard recounted in childhood by an old hermit on his own homeworld, and for all his cocky flaunting of his experience grated her nerves, as much as she felt distinctly peeved for having been made to look silly and clueless when she meant to be making _him_ look that way, her genuine interest in asking about various specifics was stronger. Intrigued, she learned that symbols of faith apparently worked on some variations, and behold! : Even got a little bit of actual praise from him when he called her question of whether it was the Vampire's own faith or that of the would-be repeller that mattered, and how a non-believer would fare in either case, and heard him call that a _very_ good question.

As it turns out, it was faith _itself_ , the mental state of feeling it, that caused the effect, and she heard him recount how a disillusioned war veteran with a bible had not succeeded, while a zealot with a communist badge _did_.

She never really expected an actual reply when as asked what _he_ had used to repel them, because he certainly wouldn't have answered back when she first met him, but to her surprise, he actually did, looking her in the eye with an unexpectedly serious frankness: He'd chanted the names of people like her, people who had come with him, friends, comrades, apprentices, lovers, people he worked with, people he got stuck with, children he took in, people who had shared his journey.

He then veered off into blatantly, clumsily trying to connect to her with a recollection of something they could snark about _together_ instead of at each other, an instance where he had met a batch of 'vampires' in medieval Venice, which, despite actually being fish-people, managed to have a lot more in common with actual vampires than certain modern renditions, (*sparkles*) and, incidentally, just in case he hadn't impressed her enough, he happened to have done that alongside Amelia not-yet-Williams and her husband-to-be, who, by the way, was also the inspiration behind the tale of the Lone Centurion (another of Clara's favorites), and... Professor Song's father? She'd met Amelia Williams' _Daughter_? Long story, obviously. Wow. Apparently, Clara had even met the Williamses herself, while she was in his time stream, but the Doctor asked her not to try to remember because, basically, the Daleks got her. It sucked, though, to have met her favorite writer, and not remember it. And how cool was that, that her closest friend actually knew her favorite writer... sure, he knew a lot of writers, one look at the man's library, or nowadays, his console room, would immediately tell you that while he may not look it, he was one hell of a bookworm, as much as Clara was, and she could imagine that he, too, had dreamed away most of his youth with his head buried in pages, and his fondness for Earth Culture apparently extended to its literature. So it was no small wonder that he had, one way or another, come across them all: Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, HG Wells... (although, as she had once embarrassingly found out, Jane Austen had _not_ been added to that list yet) but of course, the one he actually traveled with (turns out she was, ironically, Legs girl from the TARDIS' visual records. Not how she would have imagined her at all, but it sort of made her appreciate the catty time machine's sense of humor.) for a longer amount of time just _had_ to be Clara's favorite... that man. Like he was _made_ for her, like even his flaws and imperfections were tailored to make her learn about herself and the world. The man she's saved, the man who'd rewarded her for that with his unending devotion and gratitude, who was all this even after he'd come a long, long way, walked a bizarre, anfractous path before he'd ended up right here, a path which twisted upon itself, which had bits of it scattered throughout time and space in no particular order, crossed and influenced many others, being influenced and redirected in turn, and, to say the least, could not be further a neat, orderly progression in the vein of 'Boy meets girl, and happily ever after' -

He kept dropping names then, of course, historical figures, important leaders from the future, names she she didn't know because they were part of that hidden, invisible world that everyone else chose to forget. Hunters of the paranormal, both organized and independent, and names she did know – Grant and Jovanka, the activists. She'd read about their efforts. Dorothy McShane the philanthropist, although the charity was, so he implied, probably a front for UNIT or the like, or maybe she working on her own from beneath her huge mansion (Clara had heard of her on TV before, and already thought her to be a pretty cool person before finding out she was basically Batman; She sort of wanted to go meet her one day, if he could be persuaded to drop by...) – His fingerprints had been all around the world she lived in every day, his handwriting plain to see for those who could recognize it, she merely had to notice...

And and interesting as all this may have been, as delightful as it was to be privileged to see through the facade and surface of what made up the world and begin to grasp the mechanisms and interconnections that kept it together and gave it its shape, there was an even more urgent thought that floated to the top in the ocean of her mind, something that gave her pause earlier and wouldn't be ignored or dismissed. Mention of Professor Song, or a famous love story that involved someone who had waited out a long separation... that made her recall Trenzalore. – And come to think of it, hadn't he half-deliriously mentioned an "Amelia" at the time, too?

All those concepts and associations floated around in the back of her mind and tugged at her consciousness in the form of a question, one that she dared not say out loud; She had already upset him enough, back in the day, no use in dragging out old sleeping dogs that could be comfortably ignored... instead, she asked something that, all things considered, was probably equivalent in at least some of its overall dimension of meaning, not necessarily a metaphor, but rather the opposite, an application of the principle that was even more fundamental:

"About the vampire stories, though... If you were that scared of all those freaky fairytales and creepy nursery rhymes, why'd you ask that hermit friend of yours to tell you _yet more_ creepy stories? Did you want to face your fears?"

"Face my fears, hah! That what _he_ spoke about at the time, but I didn't really understand what he meant until much later..."

Once again, she surmised that his younger self was better envisioned as what most would dismiss rather difficult instead of adorably precocious, any pretense of wisdom he may have _now_ being the cumulative result of much harsh experience; He'd probably have fit right into her "gifted and talented" group.

"Then why, if it wasn't that?"

"Well, I supposed the monsters would get me anyway, whether I knew about them or not, and I'd rather know what hit me..."

"...and knowing you, you wouldn't pass up a chance to show off one last time before you get eaten."

"I suppose I don't have to tell a control freak _you_ about the inexplicable comfort some people find when they're able to slap labels, categories and explanations onto things..."

"So basically, knowledge is power?"

Right then, she didn't want to bother with returning his little jab.

"...Yep. And, once in a while, the stories about a given monster _do_ actually come with some useful information as to how to ward it off. Your garlic necklaces."

Judging by his expression, he fully expected her to laugh at this, or at least concoct some snarky retort, but instead, to his puzzlement, she reacted with a quiet, fond smile.

The sort of memory _that_ summoned up had nothing to do with silly boys, but rather, included the sight of a grown man who had finally found the power to turn his dreams and ambitions into reality, someone who had turned his defects into superpowers and his uniqueness into strength, the perfect picture of all she had been trying her hardest to become for most of her life, the scared little boy all grown up, out there doing the things only he could do, everything he was in full bloom –

("We surrender!")

Strange how... the recollections of a time they nearly parted and, for all intents and purposes, was mostly spend in a state of melancholy and regret whenever they weren't fearing for their lives would have become one of her fondest memories of _them_ , a day on which she came to further refine her understanding of not only him, but also herself.

Once resolved, the conflicts and doubts of the time just seemed to fade into the background compared to what it felt like to snuggle up against his arm and rest her head on his shoulder, to be looked at with such tender, almost brittle expressions of longing, or those words she really shouldn't have said, but wouldn't take back for anything in the world.

It as a day on which she discovered yet another of the unexpected grains of truth in the many stories that had always filled her dreams, one of many such days that had followed the very first... discovery that had always been waiting for her, an encounter with the brooding menace and half-glimpsed mysteries of Captain Nemo coupled with the anarchic heroism of Robin Hood, standing up to become worthy of his muse , the power and experience of Merlin coexisting with the work an almost professionally practiced fool that could rival jesters like Till Eulenspiegel, the unwordly, detached calculations of Sherlock Holmes needing a Watson to explain them to the world, a person of abstract concerns and, at the same time, without even a necessary contradictions wells of hidden passion for the individual pieces that made up the larger picture, even just one, that were enough for his feelings toward one single girl to remain unextinguished over the centuries spent in the cold, lightless fields of Trenzalore, not unlike a like a certain Roman friend of his; The snobbish, socially unpolished exterior of Mr. Darcy waiting for a certain proud, discerning girl with high ideals to accept more shades of grey into her view of the world find the surprisingly caring person beneath, the Belle in the castle of the Beast, torn between something seemingly ideal that she _should_ want, but cannot be obtained without pretending to be something she is not, and someone dangerous, broken and flawed whom she's been frequently warned of, but would love and appreciate all of her just the way she is, as long as she were willing to return that favor... on the tragic quest of Lady Amalthea, old as life, old as the moon, yet, with a newness to her like she was not born yesterday, the very last, looking for the others that she would never fit back in with after the experiences of her long journey and her time among her mortal fellows, dreading the days she would carry the weight of knowing their names after they were long gone, her skin, face and hair already without a speck of color when she was still coming to terms with the form she found herself in, unsure of how to utilize her face and limbs to produce an expression, or how to even make sense of the feelings that were buzzing around inside all that, dreaming away her days when the others she sought for so long were just steps away, hidden inside the sea, trapped behind a crack, same thing, the same, bittersweet conclusion; A literature expert such as Clara would know that every bit as well as a hero like Prince Lir: They cannot be together, because the happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story, and this poses more and more of a problem the longer a story goes on.

Regardless, even knowing what this meant, Clara could never have forgiven herself if she had allowed this story to end on Trenzalore, not yet, not on her watch, not on either occasion –

After all, he was, if nothing else, her favorite story of them all.


	9. Pomegranate Seeds

_Even still I was built_ _  
_ _to tolerate your temper-ature_ _  
_ _It fluctuates so I must break_ _  
_ _Through the bleak of winter_ _  
_ _Through your latest barrier_

_Your latest barrier_

_-Tori Amos, 'The Beauty of Speed'._

* * *

One day, she happened upon him as he was sleeping.

It wasn't the first time, exactly, but it wasn't a common sight, not exceedingly rare, although not frequent, either; To begin with, she did not stay over on the TARDIS all that often so she supposed that her chances of catching a glimpse were somewhat below those of the average passenger, but even when she was gone away with him for maybe days at a time, she would usually go to bed before him and wake to find him already up and about, whirling around the console and gushing about some list of potential next destinations with that usual, undimmed enthusiasm of his, or possibly tinkering away underneath it, but fresh as a rose either way.

Her best chances of witnessing him sleeping were probably when they were staying somewhere else, in hotel rooms or makeshift camps somewhere over the course of an adventure, when mere practicality would suggest that he do it within her sight; She'd wordlessly held him quite a few times after he got himself knocked out or severely exhausted braving various dangers, although the usual rule of finding him long since up and about and desperate to occupy himself the next morning applied even then, so it would have been fair to say that she treasured those rare moments when they came up, just for the chance to observe his peaceful breathing and get a good look at his relaxed features on one of the few occasions on which he would actually hold still and let himself be admired – There were even a few times, back in those golden days when it seemed almost like they were permanently attached to each other, when he had allowed her to let him let his head in her lap, perhaps out of no thoughts at all, just casually rolling himself over there, cracking an offhanded, somewhat awkward joke about 'getting her to a nunnery', and just for a moment, she ignored, in her mind, the grizzly fates that befell Hamlet and Ophelia after the scene that spawned that quote and the grievous abuse involved even there, so that she might, in some as-of-yet innocuous shape of vanity, admire herself, and both of them, in that archetypical pose, herself as his comfort, always there to soothe his brooding thoughts, reaching down to caress his face and play with his dark hair, and him, her mad, impossible lover, showering kisses upon her hand while he calculated and calibrated the specifics of some mystery that wasn't nearly as faraway as she thought, mumbling the occasional incoherence for her to decipher, for she, too, like many generations of literary analysts, could never quite tell: Mad, or faking it? Deliberate exaggeration, misdirection or lie, actual obliviousness on his part, or just the extent of the actual ridiculousness of this world?

One thing was for certain: He liked to keep her guessing, and it was a folly they probably shared.

But when he finally nodded off, his features relaxing, releasing themselves from the strain of deep frowns or wide, manic grins, she would be oddly struck by how he almost looked like any other boy, like he might actually succeed at blending into a crowd, given a jeans and a t-shirt, and - she thought she recalled him saying that he sometimes even dreamed, that he – or that was the implication, at least – regularly retreated to his chambers for that explicit purpose, or so one might think, there was no getting a straight answer out of him.

His personal room, like his birth name or the circumstances of his departure, was one of these things he liked to be mysterious about, and the longer he'd avoided the question, the more colorful his excuses grew. Given that she had already been made privy to many of these things he just refused to spill, Clara had not even given up all hope that she might just get to see it one day, but for now, it had remained unknown to her, which meant that if she were to catch him sleeping on the TARDIS proper, which would be... typically once in a few months, sometimes more frequently, like twice or thrice the same month, it would be after he dozed off somewhere within her reach, in the library at times, or underneath the console, over books, tools and disorderly sketches and scribblings, his mouth slightly open, dark hair hanging into his face where his pale skin wasn't obscured by soot, ink stains and red impressions left by the implements he'd spent a good while laying on, and at the time, she'd thought nothing of it, even found it cute.

So no, it wasn't the first time.

It was, however, the first time she found him doing this looking like _that_.

Part of her had cautiously awaited this, or at least, filed it as a potential opportunity to harness; In secret, she wondered if any of the many associations contained in this confusing amalgamation of a man would finally have taken over when she found him like this, finally in his own element, after the both of them had had the time to adapt to the situation, and what the sight would do to her. Would he have lost all allure, as if she'd merely found some weird uncle of hers snoring in his chair, some unwelcome perception of his form coming to the forefront when he wasn't awake to move it around in some astonishingly unusual way? Would his sharp features maintain that air of menace even with no will there to tense them, warning her to stay away?

When she finally beheld him, she honestly couldn't say.

She found him slumped on that newly acquired desk he had placed under the console, a dusty, smelly thing right at home among the mess of wires and cables that hung down, the messy innards of the moody machine he kept pouring hours of his days into, perhaps the closest anything could come to a visual equivalent to the contents of his scrambled mind.

The whole room no longer bothered to conceal that he basically lived in here, or maybe he had just reached an acceptance of it, and, for good measure, made sure to spare himself the walks to the library, or any reasonable place to keep the writing utensils; Between the ornate bookcases, the indefinable contraptions and more than one desk cramped with yellowed paper and a touch of gothic accessories, just a pricket here or there, to supplement the dim, feverishy-red glow from the inner column, the whole place had come to resemble a gloomy cave or cellar, perhaps the study of a wizard or alchemist, straight out of a book, with the distinctions that books didn't confer any smell, not of engines, not of sulfur or busted experiments, not of aged paper or somewhat more rarely, even oil paint, or the omnipresent chalk dust clinging to everything, the streams of associations and subconscious incoherence that had previously remained confined to the inside of his head and his diary pages, now scrawled across this room for everyone to see. She wouldn't have pegged him for a diary person, originally, though he claimed to be so rigorous that he once kept doing it even when he had been forced to wipe his own memory for a while... even though he _also_ proclaimed that he never found the time to be as thorough as he wished to be.

Looking at this room now, trying to extrapolate what sort of a first impression it may have left if viewed without further knowledge of anything previous, casting it's owner as the diary-keeping sort did not seem like much of a stretch at all. Granted, it was probably cheating to draw this conclusion while she could see some of his old notes scattered about around his current workplace, some of them on the floor around the desk that seemed to have become his designated gadget-crafting workbench as of late, and indeed, the flock of random objects strewn across his surroundings did include two or three of his typical makeshift kitcheny contraptions intended for some presumably rather specific, but as of yet undisclosed later use. To craft them, he must have been looking up some of his old notes from way, way back; While Clara was by no means an expert on dating old pieces of paper – and, ultimately, grew more and more sure that he must have been using some sort of technology to keep the pages from crumbling to dust the more she considered it , there was a fairly obvious cue that made their relative age apparent: Those new faces, as it would seem, also tended to come with brand new handwriting, and the cryptic, cursive scrawl covering those pages (which Clara had since identified as belonging to the 'sand shoes' incarnation) had little in common with the writings that covered the surrounding blackboards, its letters clearly distinct from each other, the lowercase ones barely distinguishable from the capitals, and all of them made up hard, straight strokes that prematurely faded out toward the end probably due to insufficient application of pressure, as if he were losing interest in each letter halfway along the road and couldn't wait to move on to the next one, possibly a common denominator that could explain both variants of dreadful script, especially if one took into account how fast he commonly talked – or typed – and supposed that he had similar ambitions with his written word – so while the concrete aspect of his writing varied, it always succeeded in making Clara's hair stand on end.

In her capacity as a teacher (and a nigh-compulsive perfectionist), she could not help but cringe and suppose that it certainly fit that stereotype of how academics tended toward terrible handwriting, a phenomenon which, as the ample collection of assorted hilarious trivia that her incidentally well-read brain helpfully supplied, was actually known as " _Doktor_ schrift" in the German language.

Knowing him and his track records, there was some chance that he was personally responsible for that, or _would_ be, at some point in his personal future, and surely hadn't batted an eyelash at leaving the Federal Republic's entire stock of physicians to receive the blame.

The scattered notes themselves consisted of realistic sketches of strange creatures intersecting with what almost seemed like scattered, repetitive bits of stream-of-consciousness poetry, when it didn't slide into technical treatises or sprawling messes of symbols, seeing as he was liable to lapse into mathematical equations or random languages, in mid-sentence, wherever modern English failed to contain his erratic chains of associations, and here and there, she could make out the complex, interconnected circular structures that, judging by their resemblance to the symbols on the TARDIS controls, were most likely writing in his native language, presumably, some dialect of modern Gallifreyan, if local languages were even still a thing on a world that had been home for a space-faring civilization for so long that even the myth-shrouded days of their society's founding featured the thinkers and rulers of old abusing the Kardashev Scale for fun and profit; It boggled the mind to consider how long it might even take for anything to _become_ myth among people with those kinds of lifespans.

The crown jewel in the collection of the various oddities arranged on and around that desk, however, was the cause of them all, his long arms sprawled over the desk, his head and chest rested somewhere between them, among what was probably dangerous volatile technical equipment, dark clothing dusted with chalk dust, colorless curls in disarray, his features all askew unaware that his trusty screwdriver had rolled off his workbench and found its own resting place on the floor.

And although she had seen him dozed off before and thought nothing of it, she couldn't help but notice, half guiltily and half with apprehension, that the odd blobs and bubbles of emotion within her seemed to be mounting the first wary, uncertain stirrings of a reaction.

She was hesitant to even approach him to begin with, his scattered belongings seeming to repel her like a circle drawn in chalk, the sort that the occasional fantasy novel protagonist used as a makeshift protective charm to ward off evil spirits, and in the gloom of their dim surroundings, their ability to make her uncharacteristically afraid that she might step on something seemed almost supernatural, or merely a pretext for a more diffuse feeling that accompanied the sight of that hooked nose and the frown lines in their vicinity, but stranger yet was the paradoxical sensation that still drew her inwards, if not necessarily in a way she was completely comfortable with. Daunting as he was, there was still something that pulled on her caring instincts, but now how she'd liked, with some unjustified urgency that she had no direction to point into while she stood frozen at the border of his region, a second thing of which she could not determine whether there was any more left to it than stale old obligation leftover from better days, and traces of searching, disorientated longing that she really ought to have squished out of herself by now.

She felt the need to _react_ , somehow, like the sight was something she needed to do something about, but she didn't know what, or if anything she might do would even be appreciated; He might snap awake from the slightest sound, and-

She didn't even know what might happen then.

She didn't know what made this so different – She worried about him, she supposed. It wasn't an unusual thing to worry about your friend that you had braved many trials with, but none of those memories seemed to contain this sharp, hostile face, that, so far, meant mostly uncertainty to her feelings and experiences, and somehow managed to nurture that impression rather than mitigate it with every passing day, and that alone made those former times feel strangely far away, like there had been more days in that span of months than in the previous ones. She had come to regard him as under her protection, or part of her duty, someone she was supposed to support and would never just leave, but back then, the good times were abundant between the hardship, and nowadays, she couldn't slap a label on half the things that went on with them both in the room, or what came out of his mouth - And yet, if nothing else, the mere intellectual knowledge that something from those days, at very least another set of memories, was situated there before her pulled her forward with an unrealized impulse:

A long time ago, she had tried to reach for his hand, but she had been too late to grasp it before it disintegrated into radiance;

She wanted to take him into her arms and let him find a home in the gaps and inversions of her form, but there was a fair chance that he might rebuff her, and even when she _made_ him take his old place, he did not fit into it quite like he used to (not even when she stood on the tips of her toes) left her more convinced each time that she entire procedure had taken place entirely for her own benefit;

She wanted to keep him safe and warm and comfortable, but despite all the times she'd held him, she couldn't say if he wasn't already just exactly as cold as he was supposed to be, in the frantic moments of comparing fading memories that bled the pain of lost chances all over her, and trying to concentrate either way, she just couldn't be certain.

She even wanted to seize him and plant a kiss on his cheek like she'd always done, a light brush of her skin against his that could almost have passed for a friendly peck if it hadn't come to hold its own, very special meaning between them, but she was beginning to dread that even that would not be enough to reach him, and worse, to doubt whether she had ever reached him at all, but in spite of all this, he still looked to her for guidance, and she'd found herself backed against a wall, faced with the very real possibility that she could not give it to him, that she might not be able to think of _how,_ and that, frankly, came close to challenging her ideas of how she defined herself; She was supposed to know what to do and how to be strong for him, but within the first days of appearing before her, this strange, unbidden man before her had managed to drive her to the ends of her strength, pushed her beyond what she would handle even just by herself, and worn her out with worry until her capacity for putting up a compassionate front had fractured into frustration, much of which was squarely directed at him, and without much hesitation to return in kind, and seemingly no regard for what she thought or felt, or any of her circumstances, he was quickly starting to deserve it;

Before long, life as she knew it had completely transformed with some semblance of irreversible permanence, and she started to find herself sitting in her room, telling her three reflections that the four of them would find a way to do this, and that they should probably all calm down.

It wasn't even the first time she had seen him with a different face; Besides the occasional vague flashes left over from her intimate encounter with his time stream, there was the incident in the national gallery and the memory of affectionate gestures to her cheeks and knuckles, and what she'd chosen to view as the first stirrings of a growing admiration, no doubt a stepping stone toward his third visit to the place, this time, with her at his side to begin with; It was one thing to deal with his past which, whatever it may contain, would almost necessarily lead to the day he wound up on her doorstep, just as she had come to know him, but another to face an uncertain future with hardly anything familiar to hold on to.

She understood the rough gist of the process, that it meant that he would get to postpone his "permanent" stay of Trenzalore after all, and make it off the planet on a pair of strong legs, as impossible as that seemed a moment ago, when she found him in the bell tower, but maybe it was the very thought that she would be completely okay with this that let fear and doubt creep in before she could notice it, only blindside her by flaring up just as they were both hit by the realization the transformation was just about to finish – That some bizarre turn of circumstance had allowed her, however briefly, to see him looking more or less how she remembered him before certainly didn't help with processing the reality of the last hour... last few hours, or last few centuries, and then, before she knew it, some impulse had taken her over and compelled her to beg him to stay, a flurry of doubts blossoming inside her thoughts like a flock of butterflies, countless multicolored variations of "What if..." and "What if he doesn't" fluttering through her being and before she could even thing of getting them under wraps, there was a flash of amber, and the metamorphosis was complete – Like breath on a mirror indeed.

What followed was a sequence of minutes that, in all likelihood, would never be known to either of them as more than a wild, convoluted blur. Later she would entertain the guess that he probably wanted to be in familiar surroundings when the full extent of the change hit, or perhaps there was some further, technical reason beyond the sentimental for him to prefer to be on the TARDIS, but one might think that given his general predisposition toward side effects, he'd eventually realize that would just end with him producing a crash landing it in a manic daze, and she'd bet anything that this can't have been the first, or the last time this occurred.

'As with all biological processes, there are large individual differences', he'd once told her, when the subject had come up after their trip to the national gallery, as he proceeded to lament about a particularly gifted acquaintance who might now have a real chance to turn up alive (much to his delight at the time; They had gone out to celebrate and finally had these cocktails after all, and every few minutes, he seemed to think of someone else who might now have a chance of survival: Relatives, classmates, allies and friends he'd made for himself on his various exploits, and she thought she'd never seen his grassblade-green eyes so radiant, his smile so bright, his arms flapping about with such lightness and expectant elation, like he might just stumble across the blasted orange globe this week or the next; The irony is only bitter in retrospect.) once he got that planet un-frozen from wherever it had gotten to – The woman in question had apparently had complete control of her appearance, to the point that she could make use of the residual malleable state of the first few hours to actually 'try on' different forms, and then waltz out of the TARDIS to explore like nothing happened, although that was far from the average case; Clara supposed that it was comparable to how some humans would just have really bad teeth or increased susceptibility to colds, or how two people might go through things like puberty or periods with very different amounts of pimples or cramps, respectively. Maybe he'd just happened to be born like that, there might be some circumstantial reasons that he'd gotten unlucky more often than not, or perhaps it ran in his family, in the end, it didn't matter _why_ , all thoughts of explanations, implications or further reasoning had been swept away beyond both their reaches, and for that horrible moment, all her unspoken fears came to life at once, ripped her gridworks of self-reassurances off her walls and left her tumbling in free fall, struggling to hang on or process shards of perceptions, her own hands, white knuckles pressed against the railings in the console room, noises crashing into her awareness, exploding machinery and dinosaur roars, the peak of adrenaline making everything inside her contract while his blue box was still hurdling past tall ferns -

In short: Chaos.

Perhaps the one thing she feared most in the universe. Or one of them, anyways.

She was supposed to have been with a person she would trust with her life at the moment, something that should have been reassuring even if it was just in a purely symbolic or motivational manner, but she didn't feel like she was – the grey, spidery creature by the console did little to help; The most he could do was to direct his incoherent ramblings at _her_ , and although those intermittent flashes of lucidity or recognition ought to have been a mitigating factor, what he asked of her did instead inject her with a dose of fresh dread:

That day, he had looked to her for help, and she couldn't give it to him.

Behold: The most dreadful few minutes of her life so far, at least, until that point; They pretty much set the tone for how the next days, weeks, months had gone, and didn't take long to be trumped in terms of awful experiences, but it wasn't as simple as saying that everything had gone downhill from there, either. Rather, she felt as if she were carefully treading along an imaginary path of thin ice across a large, open lake, right where she presumed the thickest layer to exist, but had no way to confirm that guess.

It's not like there hadn't been any good times in between, moments where she felt as if she were at very least approaching an understanding, but then, something else would happen to throw all their progress into doubt and make her question why she even put up with all this anymore, why she'd ever agreed to come with him at all. Her life, or at least this arrangement that had been a very important part of it for the last three years, had become a stormy sea of questions, unpredictability and ambiguities, and everything, including the fact that many of these things weren't _that_ new when you thought about it, refused to make sense.

 _He_ refused to make sense, and it put her on edge, more than it should, or perhaps less, she had principles that should have informed her actions, but _how_ to apply them, what the various weighing scales would suggest was the outcome of the balance sheet, that seemed fuzzier by the day, and even her ideals themselves seemed harder and harder to make out to define; They had been tall towers of a shining white forest, but now they seemed hidden in the mists, and told her absolutely nothing except reasons why she was probably doing something wrong one way or another, and in the midst of it all, there was him, every bit as likely to react to a given situation with disgusting callousness as he was to turn to her and make her understand in no uncertain terms that she's caused him heartbreak, and she couldn't seem get a hold of the steering wheel, and felt own feelings and ideas being thrown into chaos, too, just by extension, like some kind of poison spreading through interconnected bodies of water.

Worry and frustration were at war inside her, feeding off each other, and reason found itself torn between demanding his condemnation, that she should just disconnect herself from this disarray or try to get the things she no longer found here somewhere else, and telling her that none of this was his fault, and yet, maybe it was, maybe some part of her still hung on to the vain fantasy that all this could have been avoided if he'd desisted from sending her away when they found the time crack on Trenzalore.

He'd left her behind, furious and sick with worry, and this was pretty much her default state these days; She never knew what he might be _doing_ , she was afraid to even let him out of her sight, as much as he told her that he'd managed to live through the last 2000 years, or her own warnings not to wear herself out attempting the impossible – Even as she saw him now, not even remotely engaged in anything dangerous, completely still except for his soft breathing, he made her mind race. What was he even doing, nodding off in a place like this? Was he even getting enough sleep?

It was a long time ago that she'd voiced her suspicion that he needed somewhat less than a human, and he'd confirmed it, but never placed an exact number or clarification on it that didn't seem like an obvious exaggeration, and at the time, she'd accepted it, he was supposed to be from another planet after all; But ever since, she'd met _tons_ of people who were from other planets, witnessed it being varying degrees of a big deal, and come to realize that she had no way to tell how much of his various oddities were due to his being a Time Lord, and how much were just him, just how he had been born and the choices and promises he'd made ever since; He was a Time Lord alright, but as far as she could tell with hr limited exposure to all things Gallifreyan, he was a _very unusual_ Time Lord. and she knew for a fact that beds seem to have been a thing on his own, so the locals spent enough time asleep to merit specific furniture, despite his various wild claims; To an extent, he probably enjoyed to keep her guessing, to make himself look impressive to her by any means at his disposal, and the species difference merely provided him with an opportunity for that.

But it was also beginning to dawn on her that there was another important reason why he had avoided to disclose any sort of sensible, concrete numbers among the lines of 'five hours' or 'once every three days', one that was not all that outlandish and significantly closer to home than she was comfortable with: He didn't want her to keep tabs on him.

He'd had this more or less under control in a far from ideal but still mostly functional manner and didn't want to explain why he was or wasn't neglecting his personal dosage of shut-eye at a given moment, maybe even out of some pseudo-considerate reasoning to no make her worry, but on some level, he simply knew very, very well that she would not like the truth.

And she knew that very well, because when she decided to go home and attend to that long overdue dinner date with Mr. Pink at some yet unscheduled point in the future, he'd think that it had been half a day since she'd last seen him, not very nearly a week, it would be for those very same reasons, and she didn't even want to consider what _that_ made of her, and her case wasn't helped in the slightest by how _completely_ those thoughts evaporated from her mind when she'd turned her attention back to the large, slumbering Time Lord;

He'd stirred, just the slightest bit, somewhat adjusted the position of his right arm, and returned to his former stillness, but not before mumbling a brief string on incoherence which she _thought_ might even have been English, but she could hardly make out the words.

She wondered if he was dreaming right now, perhaps of running through corridors, of tinkering with his screwdriver, or a bathtub filled with jelly babies; Or perhaps, he saw himself returned to the fields of Gallifrey, smiling with absent friends or in the arms of some long lost love... Clara rolled her eyes. The fact that he wasn't bothered by the futuristic spanner digging into the right side of his face would suggest the 'deep and dreamless' variety of sleep.

She was almost tempted to pull that thing out from under him so he might at least get his rest on the desk proper, if nothing else, its surface was more or less even.

Then again, it might not be worth it. His face - _faces_ , all thirteen of them – seemed to have more or less withstood this sort of abuse for years untold and come out fine enough, and she didn't really want to disturb what little sleep he granted himself, or, given the circumstances, had simply been overtaken by.

It occurred to her that even if she could somehow get her hands on some solid numbers, some representative statistics documenting how much time the average Time Lord (or Lady) devoted to excursions into the realm of dreams, there were quite a number of factors known – and possibly more that were unknown – to her that might predispose him toward needing somewhat less sleep or just having a harder time getting it, or at least would, if he were human. He was of above-average intelligence, to say that least, as far as she'd read that could correlate with a lesser amount of duvet-time, and on top of that, he'd often keep himself busy with some rush of very relevant work of great variety, he was always active, always learning a new language or testing out some new idea; Thinking of explorers, her thoughts would lead her to her lifelong faible for travel books and how that had inevitably lead her to familiarize herself with various books about the multidisciplinary genius Alexander Humboldt and his expeditions to South America, and how he'd made do with six hours tops at the height of those trips, categorizing and sampling the local life, measuring land that had never been drawn onto maps before, and speaking out against slavery and colonial policies along the way – and given that he'd accomplished all this with the limitations of a human, one might imagine what was possible if you ventured slightly beyond them – Or didn't _have_ to imagine, if you happened to be Clara Oswald and were personally acquainted with _another_ quite distinguished explorer, a man who had probably seen more of this world and its highlights and turning point than any other individual, at very least when you only considered the two-legs-two-arms variety of life, and much of what he'd witnessed had been none too pretty, either, which perhaps – or, most certainly – accounted for another common source of insomnia.

In addition to all this, he was, in some shape or form, certainly in _some_ ways if not necessarily in the ones that counted, a... somewhat older person. She was more hesitant with applying that classification, not in the least because she could very much imagine his indignant reaction – but, just as a general statement. Old People. Those tended to sleep less, or have a harder time sleeping, than younger individuals, or that's what it was like in humans.

When they first met, he'd told her pretty much right off the bat that he was a time traveler from an advanced alien civilization, that he had two hearts and a personal age in the quadruple digits, but given the sheer amount of new and incredible things he'd brought with her when he crashed into her her life and slammed headfirst into her understanding of the world, he might as well have told her that he's some sort of manic, magical pixie. Her means of understanding what any of this _meant_ were restricted to observation, imagination and purely intellectual understanding.

Given his old-fashioned clothes and never-ending well of unbelievable anecdotes, it was not too hard to believe that he was older than he looked; Despite his at times exceptionally poor grip on his inner five-year old, he did, all things considered, carry himself much like a sort of mad professor. As early as during their trip to Ankhaten, she could tell that he had fierce conviction grounded in experience, and deep thoughts about this world and the place of its inhabitants in it; He had his fair share of silly moments, which connected them at times, simply because they had the same quirky sense of humor, but his more childish impulses grated on her nerves often enough; But at other times, everything that came from his mouth had at least seven meanings, all his gestures and reactions had their place in his larger relation to the universe. At first she was daunted, and perhaps insulted that she'd be made to feel this way, because she refused to be any sort of ghost or replacement or stand in, and having seen his world, she wondered what other place this even left for her in this world, whether he'd see her as someone to have an equal discourse with, but then, he'd told her: "You are the only mystery worth solving" and she knew he was talking of all humanity , and simultaneously, of what kept him engaged with the world; And he was also talking of her, in particular, as he saw her every day and longed to know her, he was really as mesmerized as he seemed, as she'd hoped he was. In hindsight, she realized that the mystery or her Echoes must also have been on his mind at that time, but it was one of many things, and there was no seeing one instead of another for him, no reduction to any kind of surface, because that was the amazing thing about him:

He was a person who could value the wideness of the world, the excitement of the rare and unknown and the turning of the wheels of fate, but that didn't take away from his appreciation for the value or, say, a single little girl, or a smart, dependable woman, there was no contradiction between his valuing of the macro- or microcosm, and for her, Clara Oswin Oswald, the impossible girl, who, as an entity, extended into both those realms, he had nothing but fascination, and recognition of her as an entity like himself, even if that came with suspicion and wariness fostered by his long, embittering life that just didn't allow him to believe that one good thing could fall into his lap like this, too hardened to believe in impossible heroes when one stared him in the face every time he walked past a mirror, and too disillusioned of himself to imagine that someone might decide to risk life and limb to repay him for all the good he did to this world.

All that time, he kept asking who she was, when he should really has been asking that of himself, should have wondered who he was, or what he might come to be: Her chosen, the closest person to her in the world.

Or was he? He had been, at the time, but the moment she had pulled hat stunt was just one instant, one thing, that was still out there, but in her personal past now, and much, much further in his; There was nothing, nothing all assuring that they couldn't adrift apart regardless, because there was _never_ any certainty of that, and while there might be some things that don't always end, there were none that didn't at least have the capacity to.

She'd liked herself in that role, the one judging him worthy of her, the one who would polish herself to shine to meet him, the one conspiring to leave some of her fruit-orange lipstick on his pale cheeks, paying no mind to the little boys looking for a playmate and politely refusing the suitors piling at her feet because she'd found the one who understood, who would misjudge as her as sweet or simple just because she was caring, or as blind to the little wonders contained in the laugh of a child just because some part of her always lusted for the starts, who could look past the veil of her youth and see choice and deliberateness where others expected little girls that needed to be lectured about what she'd chosen as the most basic parts of her world, and what a sweet though it had been, oh, how often she' stared at herself in her mirrors, the sin of self-love possessing all her eyes, telling herself that she was the 'boss', the mistress of her own little imaginary castle, hanging the destroyer of worlds among her cloudy trophies.

She didn't even get more than she bargained for, but having expected what might hit her, the days on which she might have to pay for all her indulgences and perceptions, and taste the truth of the unfathomable depths, the abyss of years she had judged herself fit to not just handle, but take for her own decoration, just as he had taken her for his, although he did, at least, have the guts to admit his mistake, losing whatever points that earned him through the unfairness that was always implicit in the "It's not you, it's me" game, the cowardice to only admit his feelings after he'd assured that nothing would become of them, leaving her stunned, alone with processing the knowledge of what her hasty, defensive words had just thrown away.

He'd said he was 2000 years old, that he'd made many mistakes, that he should not have misjudged his place, that the blame was not on her – but all he'd done was to make her wonder whether she hadn't misjudged _hers_ from the very beginning.

When he showed up at her doorstep, he wasn't quite that far ahead yet, although he'd already had his fair share of tearing a blazing trail of not mostly glory through the fabric of the universe.

When he first showed up at her doorstep, underneath all hi big coats and bow ties and the occasional wigs, he'd looked thirty.

She'd known he wasn't, she wouldn't _want_ him to be, if anything, his looks had presented a nifty loophole to get her hands on someone who _wasn't_ thirty, who secretly 'counted' as those experienced patrician types she'd always had a bit of a thing for (but never chose to actually pursue, given that it barely looked like the reasonable thing to do) without anyone _noticing_ and sticking up their nose unless she chose to tell them.

But now her 'loophole' was gone and she was forced to face what she had done, what she had always known to be unreasonable , what she'd always tried to avoid because she knew it would never work out, because it was the one thing that might have been a little _too_ impossible even for the two of them - "Trick is, don't fall in love."

There it was, the confirmation of a chance, of a reciprocation, only after both these things seemed gone forever.

Maybe, at some point, because she was only human, because she didn't get everything right all the time, because _no one_ could be as right as she tried and wished to be, she'd made the unproven, unspoken assumption that he was, at least, some _equivalent_ of thirty, however rough it may be. The truth, it turned out, was significantly more complex, and it turned out, aging was the one thing that worked very, very differently for Time Lords and humans. He wasn't just long-lived, he was subject to a different life cycle, one that involved not just changing forms bits of looking outwardly old or young all crisscrossed, and as if to make it even more confusing, she'd found out firsthand that a "fresh" face didn't even necessarily have to _look_ particularly fresh.

Should he manage to locate and un-freeze his planet within her lifetime, and find his family sufficiently alive to introduce them to her, she'd probably have no means to tell whether a given individual was his mother or his granddaughter, at least not by appearance alone. _His_ appearance, right now, roughly evoked a human in his fifties, but any more than a passing glance would have revealed details that were distinctly off, some diffusely obvious in is shiftings and motions, others, somewhat harder to pinpoint completely, and more obvious in quiet hindsight than they had ever been in direct confrontation, not least the oddity of staring at a man who had all the wrinkles to show for a purely hypothetical lifetime, but none of the small marks, scars and calluses that would be expected to go with them; His hand were very, very far from smooth as a baby's, and yet, in some ways closer than it should have been possible.

This detail, at least, had since been remedied – even though they were all new, his active, dangerous lifestyle had not taken very long to get his hands and face covered in subtle marks and scratches, nothing anywhere close permanent scars yet but a sizable transient population that came and went like the tides, among them the last faded remainder of the circular mark left by their recent trip to the end of the universe; They healed faster than they would in a typical human, but given the amount of explosion they'd ended up running away from, there was never a shortage of new little bruises and scorch marks, superficial and slight as they may be; For many, she could make a very good guess where he might have gotten them from, others might not have even happened on her watch, as a cold a comfort as that might be. Since he was rarely ever standing still, she did not get to inspect him up close all that often, but when she did, the signs of what, to him, merely constituted the average daily wear and tear were sufficiently apparent on his pale skin, not that they hadn't been on his previous exterior, (he'd had something of a snow-white look going on back in the day), but even at his most irritating she could not seem to detach that air of fragility from him and she wasn't even sure if it was really _him_ , the remainders of his mortality etched onto his face, or merely the filter of her own perception;

Maybe it was only natural that she would be worried, that the events that had transpired would lead her might predispose her to see him in a different way, although she was herself not quite sure whether it should; One thing was the belated realization of the truth and another was the pining for faded, impossible dreams, hanging on to something long gone out of obligation to a past of which the grinding of time had left nothing but the creeping suspicious that what she'd once yearned for had been left scattered in broken bit and pieces somewhere on Trenzalore, but then there was the present, the presen _ce_ of this man who certainly wouldn't have wanted to lose respect in her eyes, and would it have been any different if he'd crashed at her place in some humiliating state after something significantly more mundane, such as one too many gulp of vodka?

She had compassion and obligation, yes, but she'd been made to feel the limits of what she had perhaps arrogantly picked for her own definition, and all she could think of was the desolation at the end of the world, the sheer _stench_ of the butchery perpetuated by Daleks and malfunctioning killer droids, and how she didn't _want_ to see him like this, despite all her earlier proclamations of wanting to know all of him down to the ugliest secrets, had no desire to witness things that would complicate it like that... She didn't want to have to see her best friend, her greatest inspiration, someone she had even once...desired... speaking incoherence in some filthy coat he might have procured heaven knows where, or throwing himself out of airlocks, or throwing other things into her face, like brazen arrogance that made her want to break that blasted face off after he'd just gotten it, or that overwhelmed sense of being lost in the dark, or anything about that unrecognizable, half dissolved being she'd gotten stuck with, and of course that wasn't all the truth, not nearly, not all there had been since then, but it was easy rationale to slip into, the practical, beckoning excuse of the difference between his world and hers, like it hadn't become one and the same long ago, like there was a way to go back to him and her before there was a 'them', like 'them' wasn't happening all around them at every moment of every day, making sure that he didn't meet his final end ahead of schedule – through the wonders of time travel, it had even been in their power to become retroactively intertwined, although one might wonder if time travel was really needed to accomplish that, or if a mind longing to make sense of the universe was enough, if it's need for order outweighed the distortions needed to rationalize and reinterpret everything as leading up to moments that were now done and over with as far as her personal time line was concerned, and there was nothing in the laws of physics promising that they couldn't part tomorrow and never meet again.

It didn't bother her that much that he might outlast her, as much as it might have bothered others before her because first and foremost, she wanted _him_ to continue before she herself even featured in; But then again, he'd come preciously close to crumbling to dust in _her_ arms not too long ago, which was what left them in this bizarre situation to begin with, through the whimsical nature of time travel and misguided heroism addressed to each of them, he'd made it off that planet, sure as he was that he never would, but he'd left some of himself behind on Trenzalore, a first taste for the planet's soil to chew on before its worms got their bristles on the rest of him, and he'd remained marred by their time apart while she stayed the same, and kept having to remind herself that his current form was technically younger and newer than it had been in a long time, bar the brief instant just before the change. In a way, she'd helped him to a complete fresh start – whether the Time Lords behind the crack had acted out of actual gratitude or pure self-preservation, granting him that new regeneration cycle might be seen as tantamount to granting him another lifetime, a second chance at spending his time in ways he wouldn't regret, or perhaps doing what he truly wanted, a deck of cards, of _days_ to live out newly shuffled – and yet, it wasn't as if the burdens and choices from his previous try at existence didn't carry over – if anything he seemed even more acutely aware of them now that he was back to his favored activity at long last and had to somehow justify to himself and the world why he'd outstayed his welcome, find a way to put the days that were ever ticking away to some good use. Or perhaps he'd always been this doubtful about himself and his place in the universe, and had merely grown too tired, too disillusioned to hide it anymore. Maybe it had been a life decision, like a new year's resolution, perhaps, if either of them would be willing to indulge that optimism; Indeed, there was much cause to see him less as someone starting over with a clean slate, with most of his connections resting in the far past, and more as a derelict remnant of bygone ages, an individual who had exhausted his natural lifespan and been artificially kept in the closest mockery of alive technology could produce, something he would likely never have considered as a favorable or commendable option if he didn't have this quest, or mission to carry out, but once again, for the umpteenth time, the long shadow of the Time War would not allow him to end, as much as his disintegrating mind proved harder to renew than his failing flesh.

Then again, one might consider that of the many forms he'd taken, he'd only worn three of them to the limit, many of his allotted years having cut short by careless foes, burnt too fast by his hazardous lifestyle, or freely given for the safety of others. In the light of this, it was perfectly feasible that he might not actually be all that ancient by Time Lord standards, and even of the times he'd managed to 'keep' a particular incarnation up to its natural expiration date, two of those, including the latest, had followed centuries of warfare, probably his least favorite activity in the world – to use an almost insulting understatement - and much of the first had been spent trapped on Gallifrey. They'd even 'executed' him once, hadn't they? If they hadn't, they could have spared themselves giving him a whole new cycle, and ensuring that there would be plenty more of him to go around and get on their nerves, so in a sense, it could be viewed as a form of justice being served, as his merely getting back what unfair circumstances had taken from him. But life wasn't measured in years alone, it consisted of experiences, stories, and their concentration in the passage of time. Even before he departed, he had by all intents of purposes had something of a full life behind him, he'd gone to school, made friends, presumably worked, as a researcher or engineer perhaps, even trying his hand at interstellar activism once, the non-interference policy be damned - he'd probably gotten married and certainly had kids and grandkids, what almost seemed like the beginning of a full-blown dynasty, and there'd been bitter losses involved at some point, given that the lady in question was no longer around, and all that ought to have accounted for a certain net value of experience, or weight, no matter how much additional time there might be left; So maybe he had never felt anything as constricting as her undeniable approach of the big thirty, no need to chose if he had all the time in the world to do things subsequently, but she, too, had spent some time preparing, or exclusively following other obligations before the day she took his hand and ran away, by no means leaving everything else behind, but she was still splitting her time, still deducting from her total number of days by spending un-counted gaps in his realms, but as much as she dreaded to imagine the end result, a somewhat lower number on her headstone might just be a fine payment because the number would still be incorrect and she'd have spent those days, or rather, the days that containing both counted and uncounted hours living to the fullest, doing all the things she wanted to do. She had priorities, but ultimately accepted no compromises which, of course, made implications of incompatibilities and consequences her worst enemies, but the day where she would be forced to look where her eyes didn't dare to tread was yet so come.

As for him, he'd probably been used to some regularity back on Gallifrey, an idea of everyday life that would have little overlap with the phenomenon as it was known to her to begin with, but that was so long ago that he'd lost all ability to even tolerate a slow day, so that even his stay on Trenzalore had been something he'd processed more as a long-term assignment to monster-hunting on one place than a definite return t long-term accommodations, a last stand – because that place and its inhabitants deserved better than to be known to him only as the place of certain doom or a place of warfare, and getting to know it before his final and permanent stay on the remote colony world was perhaps the one certain good thing that had come out of this whole confusion which, just to illustrate its bizarre nature, and that of his existence in general, had involved raiding his own tomb. He'd crossed his own path so often – usually more living than dead – that he had _running gags_ – which Clara had been all too eager to get in on – actual _inside jokes going_ on with himself.

The emphasis of the patent ludicrousness of these events might do the awe-inducing, humbling potential of those events a disservice, but it might keep someone from driving themselves mad with the mind-boggling, terrifying implications of those moments and their fragility in the web of events. Even before Trenzalore (either visit), she'd seen him reduced to tears describing the horrors he'd witnessed, the wonders he'd seen, the effort to stuff new worthwhile skills and experiences inside his skull that he embarked on every day with varying degrees of success, the people he'd met, the lessons he'd learned and the price he'd paid for all those privileges. He had personally acquainted himself with the abysses of this world, and the abysses had stared back into him; He'd come within hair's breath of his physical annihilation countless times and being lucky enough to technically survive did little to mitigate the strains he'd endured, the pain in all flavors of physical, emotional, mental and metaphysical, and worn himself out as much as that might suggest; It was not stretch to say that he'd lived significantly more in his two millenia than your average model citizen Time Lord who'd obediently eat their vegetables and live out their ten thousand years in the crowns of some secluded spires up high in the enclosure of their domed cities, never leaving the planet, never getting all to attached to anything that lay beyond, perhaps forgetting to be alive as they eyed the cosmos as a detached, dispassionate observer.

So yes, he was ancient, he was ancient before, he was even more ancient now, to a degree that almost seemed proportional to the – to her – sudden shift in his looks, and she couldn't quite say which of the new things and discrepancies were products of the regeneration itself and which were merely consequences of their long separation which had taken a while to become apparent. Then again, 'fifty-something' was more or less what he'd consistently acted like even before, albeit a very eccentric one with a very poor grip on his inner five year old – _and_ his inner showy adolescent, to be precise, neither of which had particularly improved on Trenzalore, much to her continued annoyance, and the unexpected result of her getting personally acquainted with that five year old, almost as if someone out there in eternity – or most likely, no one but herself – had dared her to try herself at the futile task of reaching directly into that thick, crowded skull of his and see if she could convince any of its individual components to make sense, or just manage to get him – either him – to calm down in whatever roundabout-retroactive manner that might have been possible; Nothing was ever particularly straightforward with him, no part, no aspect of life, and that didn't mean that it didn't count, as their own analogue they'd found for themselves in this diverse and crazy world, if they had truly found anything for certain ever at all, as certain as anything ever got around a man of whom she could never be certain if he was even being serious, or rambling madness.

Speaking of which, his general immaturity was another of these things she could not help but see in a slightly different light now; Not that it hadn't annoyed her before, not that _she_ hadn't simply been younger when they first met, less experienced, her ambitions softer, more diffuse, although she didn't want to use the word "dreamer", she resented some of its implications, and to others, she was closer now that she would have been then, her ideas now firmer and sharper, and in most cases in the process of being realized, in full progress every day, it wasn't even a real option anymore to leave them as just vague floating ideas, and she was beginning to know the taste of dreams realized, something that, she supposed, must exist in his world, too, together with a byproduct she was only just beginning to get stuck with, an experience that neither of them had ever wanted to become something they shared, and yet, something that was undoubtedly bound to accumulate as she tread along her increasingly uncertain path: The waste dreams realized leave behind.

But this, too, made it more obvious. Those things he did, those things he'd always done, the ridiculousness, they just didn't come across the same way if he did it like this, not just older looking, but that general scruffy, wild, incoherent quality that followed him these days like a dusting of an aura, half of the time, despite a fairly formal getup, although the times he went for that ...interesting choice of jumper certainly didn't help; He might as well be wearing some white undershirt underneath, given how pale he was, but frequently enough, he didn't, but the whole thing still managed to look like some pattern of a starry sky, and he obviously shot down the notion of catching any sort of cold in that thing as patently ridiculous, and evaded her attempts to prove her point by poking him through one of these holes with the sort of vehement protest reminiscent of someone's annoying younger sibling reacting to the threat of a pillow fight or tickle battle, although distinctly on the more distinctly, unapologetically peeved end of that spectrum, and he did it _looking like that,_ large, narrow frame evading her teasing little fingers, gray curls approaching their inevitable return to a state of disarray no matter which of his varied endeavors at styling it he'd pursued today. At first, she was relatively glad to see it, just because it was something she recognized, something that, perhaps, at first had been easy to overlook given his somewhat less open demeanor, but in the context, it was exposed to her, or just _appeared_ to her, as somewhat less innocuous, not quite a thirty-year-old dwelling in their parent's basement, he was doing way too much productive contributions to society for that, might even have paid some taxes for his work with UNIT, sure why not, but the way he refused to deal with any iteration of society for extended periods of time, and yet, took none too well to extended periods of isolation might be described with that parallel. His immaturity struck her as that of a cut flower, or dried, perhaps, since those didn't spoil quite as quickly, but definitely something plucked, rootless, something you'd keep in a vase, something like a still-life in rosy pastel colours alluring you from beyond a pale of glass, from where it could tempt, and yet, remain forever out of reach, caught in a moment, frozen in time – Sure, maybe that was too strict a judgment or too far an exaggeration, cut flowers might be observed as they open if you watch for a long, long time or take the risk to skip bits and pieces of time before you come back later.

But like those flowers, he was more likely to crumble to dust before he'd ever reach full bloom, let alone bear fruit; He was a frozen flower bud crawling with insects, a mummified apple forgotten in the branches, an old man too set in his ways for anyone, including himself, to have a chance at setting him straight or finding the sense in bothering. Come the Time War, come Trenzalore, whatever it was and however long it might hold him up, what little it might leave of whoever he was when he first got involved, let alone of that ignorant boy who'd once played in the red fields, it should be of little surprise that what little the never-ending fight with the Daleks had spat back out went back to his journey, for it was the only life he knew how to live anymore, and all roads back home were cut off – All she could really offer in the face of that insurmountable pyramid of years was the barest mitigation, perhaps little more than a temporary distraction from the inevitable.

Her thoughts went back to Ophelia, and the fascination readers seemed to have with her, all the way from the Elizabethan Era to right now – Clara as someone with a clue of the contemporary literature would be aware of the many ripoffs she had spawned, how 'mad scenes' had become a bit of a staple after that, because there was just something about a disoriented, disheveled madperson going about in a filthy nightgown, speaking madness, picking up flowers to sniff, handing out sharp, stinging, painfully accurate criticism of the world around her as if they were bouquets, with such uncomprehending bluntness as a person more in charge of their wits would never be able to muster. The beauty of broken things, perhaps, the tragedy of wasted potential, the challenge in deciphering the madness. But why, she had often wondered, did any metaphor about any sort of beauty, broken or otherwise, have to come packaged in the shape of a pretty girl, why did she, like many such tragic objects of fascination, the Lolitas and Sabeths of this world, only seem to exist to display the weight of Hamlet's failures without much voice of her own? Wouldn't the 'beauty of broken things' be better served by the form and example of a middle-aged man who'd been thrown out by his family after drinking himself to ruin, or perhaps an old lady barely able to hold on to the crumbling ruins and faded, once joyous memories of her long and bountiful life? Maybe she'd overestimated herself there, or underestimated the task, or the metaphor; There would be precedents for that, last but not least another, significantly more recent book where one of the main character's friends is unceremoniously dumped by the girlfriend he previously though to have a profound and unbreakable connection with, just as he was about to undergo a surgery that would leave him blind, quite transparently because it would look slightly worse if she did so afterward. Of course, Clara had been enraged and expected a thorough denouncement of the girl who had received little characterization other than her capacity for such shallowness, but the protagonist, despite her own sub-optimal health situation, or maybe exactly because of it, unexpectedly presented what the author probably considered a more empathetic point of view, that may be he'd expected too much from a teenaged girl, maybe she didn't have the strength, or other plans in her life, that maybe – 'It wasn't very nice what you did, going blind. It wasn't your fault, but it wasn't very nice',

Clara had, of course, disagreed with the notion at the time, and found the book to be rather pretentious besides, too much meta for the sake of meta and the presentation of the individual she'd be most inclined to agree with as all too obviously wrong for all the premise of making up your own opinion got touted; At the time, she would have indignantly assured anyone willing to doubt her that her 'never' would always mean 'never' and her 'always' would never mean anything other than 'always'.

But that wouldn't be the only conviction of hers that had been made to shake lately; Maybe those 'broken things' required the distance and idealization for anyone to scour them for beauty, when the _smell_ of them couldn't leap off the pages and overwhelm them.

It wasn't very nice what he did, changing his face and leaving her behind to worry what he might get up to in such a state. It wasn't his fault, but it wasn't very nice, and that they both would have expected better of her did little to keep him away from the receiving end of the poorly concealed anger and frustration she might have spared him from if she'd just accepted and confronted its existence instead of trying her hardest deny that she was susceptible to such irrational imperfections.

It would have seemed like such a convenient narrative now, even one that could be made to sound reasonable, the idea that whatever misguided attachments she may have had toward him had just decayed right in front of her like some old scraps of carrion, that she'd come to see him in the cold, wan light of complete disenchantment, or found him too different to connect to, be it too different from her, or too different from before, but that wouldn't have been the true story, and it certainly wasn't _hers_ , she didn't even want it to be hers, and she'd long since decided on another, as bizarre as it might seem to refer to the large, weathered-looking man before her as 'her clever boy'. Not it that it would have been any more correct to say that he'd put all boyish things away; There was nothing about this that would have been easy to overlook or make sense of.

But whatever she'd attempt to classify him as – a silly boy, a bratty adolescent, a middle-ages eccentric, a worn geezer, a sheer abyss, a thirty year old basement dweller who couldn't bring a date home unless his mommy approves,none of these or all at once – He merely looked the part now, and that would be his good right even if he _did_ have halfway decent control over how he'd wind up looking. However he acted, he'd acted that way for a long, long time beyond what would be proportional to anything in humans, which might just be how that worked, or a particularity of his personality. Maybe he'd come off as stuffy and overly serious when he was younger, when he'd acted just the same, but in a context where his occasional preoccupation with mischief would have been seen as expected if not permissive. Maybe he used to be rather like her, projecting a semblance of presentability, until whatever obligations had kept him from departing until his first serving of hair had gone pure white, when he, too, had discovered a part of himself that, once unleashed, refused to be stuffed back into a drawer. Or maybe she simply didn't understand. She couldn't say; She did think that she had been able to tell which of the versions she'd encountered at the National Gallery was the oldest, which the youngest, even when their outward appearance would have suggested pretty much the opposite. The him from before Gallifrey's disappearance was one thing; But she even picked up the subtle differences between the version she'd accompanied and the one in the suit, she could tell 'her' version had since come to be a bit embarrassed of his life back then, unaware that he'd soon – or not soon at all, but _eventually_ – consign the bow tie to the heap of "embarrassing fashion mistakes" (And thinking of it as something that had happened before might just make the memory of the moment she saw him discard the bow tie and the disturbing ease with which he'd given away what used to be his favorite pocket watch somewhat more bearable. It _might._ ) and there were details about how he spoke, how he carried himself, or the expression in his eyes that might betray the truth to the attentive observer, but the reason she'd been able to tell was probably that she'd had quite some time to study him and his little mannerisms; She wasn't confident that she could have pulled it off with any given Time Lord the way she might easily be able to compile photographs from throughout the life of any given human into a neat chronological order.

In any case, there was no simple equation in the style of "dog years" that she could have used to speculate what a comparable human equivalent to his age or life stage would be, but she had an inkling that it was most certainly not "thirty".

Purely chronologically, he'd existed longer than the language she'd grown up speaking, in this particular form, a few months, at most, although she could never be exactly sure how much time would have elapsed between their last meeting – sometimes he seemed so impatient she'd assume he'd just pop straight ahead to the next week, but one thing the regeneration didn't seem to have fixed was his tendency to get quite easily distracted, and then sometimes he'd arrive in a _state_ , refusing to be calmed down in ways that didn't involve mortal danger (But what else could she do? How were you support to comfort someone who didn't think much of usually approved methods such as "great warm hug"?) and bringing her ever new reasons to worry herself sick. After their separation on Trenzalore, the mere thought of longer strips of his time being lost to her was enough to drive a dreadful feeling into the pit of her stomach, and the less sense he made on a given day, the more she had taken to scanning him for any signs of a longer absence, like whether he'd changed clothes since his last visit and the general state his outfit was in, the length and style of his hair, how long it'd been since he last shaved, or if he'd lost any weight. The presence of additional wrinkles would indicate a rather more drastic disparity in the times since they last saw each other, so she usually assumed that any of those must have been a product of her own, overly frantic imagination, or maybe a simple consequence of the fact that she'd never memorized and cataloged every crease on his face, or even all detail on the previous one, not that it stopped her from feeling dread at the thought that those precious memories of a time neither of them could ever return to were already beginning to fade, when they were probably just as accurate as they had ever been. She wondered if those memories were precious to _him,_ or if they were now just something embarrassing he, or the person using the title "The Doctor" at the time however that related to his current self, just ought to have desisted from, at best – or worst? – something for which he should apologize to her.

As it stood, they both seemed to have gotten themselves cut on the shards of false hopes, but that was besides the point; The point was that she wasn't sure where he stood, what he wanted or expected of her; As distant as he might feel to her nowadays, he hadn't exactly thrown her out; Quite the opposite, he'd practically begged her to stay, told her he needed her.

Okay, alright, she was here, she was willing, but what did he need her _for_ , what did he need her to _do,_ what did he need her to _be?_ What did he _need_ , period, however it may compare to any other individual, human or otherwise.

Quite apparently, he needed her to be there to make sure he doesn't get himself _killed_ , alright, she'd been there for that, but beyond this, what could she do, what could she be for him? Not his girlfriend apparently, _fine_ , but this wasn't about her, or her place, but about him, and how she could do something that felt like she was doing more than the bare minimum of scratching the surface, because she felt she should be doing _something_ , because she couldn't just un-love him at the drop of a hat.

In the end, she couldn't just leave him, her sense of duty refused to let her run out on him, her intellect refused to give up on the hard task she had deemed herself worthy of, her pride wouldn't be satisfied with any simpler enterprise, her courage would not allow her to back down on what she considered under her protection, and her heart would always lie with him – in the end, the reason their lives were too interwoven to ever be disentangled was that she _didn't want to._ She had made it that way, she had _made_ them to be to be connected, and he would always have that place in her lap to return to even if he ceased his adoration and told her to get herself to a nunnery. But if there was no kind of loving that could mend what he'd experienced, if it was too far beyond the realm of her own experiences for her to comprehend, if her fingertips would never succeed in reaching him, she'd try to reach him with her words, and discussions of the abstract.

She'd give him her silent presence if he would have nothing else, she'd give him her best guesses if she couldn't crack the mystery, and provide him with what little comfort she could muster.

Right now, that meant tearing her gaze from his sleeping form and turning her attention toward the hatches around the central column, situated right beneath the console.

Her hand went straight for one of the handles as soon as she was remotely within range, but what she found once she knelt down and pulled it open somewhat dimmed her confidence when she was met with the sight of various machinery. She was sure that she ought to have had at least a rough guess of what each of them was for, but this was the first time she'd had a reason to personally open any of them since his 'redecoration' of the console room.

She surmised that she might simply have gotten them mixed up, happens to everyone, especially when they're distracted with all sorts of _thoughts_ , but Clara was obviously not satisfied with that for an explanation. Scanning the inside of the hatch again, she suggests to herself that this was where they put that blasted Turkey that sneaky bastard had used to distract her – but she's still mindful enough to resist the urge to slam the hatch back in place – While that alone might have been a legit way to vent her frustrations a she doubted that the potential side-effect rousing said bastard from his sleep would bring her satisfaction. So, she remains careful as she closes that hatch and heads straight for the next where – much to her relief – she finds exactly what she expects, more or less. One of the things he keeps here is usually a change of clothes in case of unexpected goop or unscheduled showers, and here they are, although he'd since adapted the contents to fit his 'new look', in fact, she thinks she recognizes that particular burgundy dress shirt from their little excursion to Sherwood forest. This implied that he had, at some point, gone through his things and gotten rid of the sets of clothing he'd previously kept here, including a few dozen multicolored spare bow ties, and possibly dumped back into the main wardrobe with all the other seldom-used costume options, or simply disposed of them.

She couldn't imagine him keeping them as a memento somehow or displaying much else in the vein of sentimental gestures; He'd probably just casually reached into the compartment grabbed handfuls of clothes and carelessly thrown them out to make room for the new content. To the left of the spare outfits, she could see that he'd gotten himself a new diary, too, (another physical reminder of a shared past purged; another reminder that this idiot was liable to as much as wipe his entire memory if left to his own devices in crucial moments) next to a fairly new blank book with many pages left to fill, she found a worn notebook wit curled, yellowed pages, presumably records from his long stay on Trenzalore, evidence of days she hadn't been part of.

Sure, she could peek inside, he'd let her get her hands on it before; The issue was not even some uncertainty whether she'd still be allowed in there, the threat of finding out which side of the completely redrawn, confusingly bizarre lines between intimacy and distance this might have fallen on – Even if he were to wake and scowl at her in disapproval, she could probably talk herself out of it, distract him, convince him, turn his previous words against him. If he was going to get pissed off, let him get pissed off! That wasn't the sort of thing that would intimidate her. But she felt exposed, doing this in his presence, she somehow felt like it would be going behind his back, like she'd somehow be forcing access into his current mind by trying to follow the line of events that created it; She wasn't even sure, didn't even think that he was doing anything like deliberately closing himself off, at least not in all aspects. He might not see this as anything out of the ordinary, let alone a breach of trust. But she had to consciously make herself shake off this sense of going through a stranger's things. The potential mundane reality that he had simply grown apart from her, gotten over her completely at any point during hose years of constant strife, that she'd come to comprehend that after reading through enough of his exploits in Christmas town for them to blur together, might or might not be worse than attributing it all to some kind of experience she might never be able to relate to beyond a level of imagination or abstract thought. The notes held in that battered journal encompassed a long, long time, so who knew how many average days of 'relatively uneventful' monster-hunting she' have to read through to get to the significant, transforming bits. Maybe it was the mere accumulation of many such days that _was_ the significance, he'd spent more such days in these frozen fields than she would ever see, too much for her to know where to even start.

So she left the diary where it was.

To the right, however, she found the picnic rugs more or less as she'd expected them, although she supposed that there wouldn't have been much of a reason to switch those; Although, given that he'd refurnished the entire room, there was no certainty of anything anymore.

But given that she'd found the picnic rugs – the closest to a blanket she could procure in the vicinity of the console room – she knew at least what to do, at least one way to partially vent her conflicting feelings, to do _something_ , however small and temporary.

Mustering some firmness of decisiveness in the pattern of her steps, she marched back to the napping Time Lord and his desk once she'd closed the hatch back down, the green-and-red plaid pattern of the designated improvized blanket beneath the fingers of her right hand.

The handy excuse of not wanting to wake him was certainly helpful in the task of avoiding whether or not her reluctance to actually touch him – for example, in the process of removing those scattered tools from under him – involved her being uncharacteristically daunted among its reasons, but then again, he'd probably have protested if he were awake.

Besides, he could very well picture him – as he was now – as a relatively light sleeper. Or she could picture him otherwise, she wasn't sure either way, hadn't been given all that many opportunities to find out.

But the least she could do was to spread that picnic rug out and drape it over his sleeping form, cautiously tugging at it here, just pulling at the cloth with the tips of her fingers, mindful to minimize even indirect contact, ruling out any chance of heat transfer, and yet, with some ache driving her purposeful operation, something longing to manifest as much as it could within the boundaries they had set for themselves, some need to know he was warm and safe and comfortable, as much as he would ever be, as much as safe heavens were anything that could be found in his future no matter what.

It was the sort of existence he was, _alien_ – not in the sense that he was from another world, but rather, it was a sort of air he'd had about him to begin with, something that would make even Gallifrey a place he'd stick out from, perhaps even more than he did right here, or on earth. A quality of being just a bit out of synch with the cosmos he was striding through, able to see through its folds from an outsider's perspective, shining light on overlooked things, exposing naked emperors and two-dimensional props of cardboard scenery thought to be absolutes, his labyrinthine marvel of a mind racing faster than even he could follow, and for each day on which she felt that this made him the only challenge worthy of her, there was another on which she felt unsure if she would be able to keep up with him; at least right now, he wouldn't be going anywhere, and that was one sort of comfort at least, cold as it may be.

But she already knew very well that even _if_ she'd been able to hold him right now, to wrap herself around him like she'd done it wit that picnic rug, there would be no warmth to him. He wouldn't exactly be _cold_ either, but, if she had to spend time in a room of just about that temperature, she'd probably make sure to be wearing long sleeves.

Before, when the sensation of his weight in her arms had still been a common occurrence, she used to think of it as a romantic, almost magical quality, like he was a prince from a frozen kingdom in some snowy, faraway land, where they dwelt in spires of ice with windows in snowflake-like patterns. But that was before he'd gone and had the juice soundly beaten out of him in the fields of Trenzalore, little by little, through ages of endless strife, and made her feel like she'd gotten stuck with a faded mirage, tired, restless, and so very lost on his way.

And perhaps unavoidably, she had found herself wondering what _she_ might feel like to _him_ , wretchedly warm perhaps, like burnt, stagnant air on a day of suffocating midsummer, where yellowed grass went to waste pining for relief from the discomfort of the heat that leaked from the sorely inefficient processes in every single of her cells, accumulating faults, with laughably little means to repair them at all, needing eight hours a day for what little meagre maintenance she was capable of, yet _still_ burning up with feverish speed, going to waste in his very grasp, and when the longer she allowed herself to brood on such thoughts, the more she asks herself the absurd question why he ever tolerated her arms and fingers in the first place, if they must have been like a festering swamp or a corpse left outside in summertime, warmed by a flourishing bloom of fungus and flies, possibly the least cozy warmth there could be, and one of the few things that terrified her so much she didn't even dare imagine it; She didn't need the previews any more than he did.

At this point, it suddenly occurred to her that she'd technically visited the grave of her closest friend, and that neither of them had thought of leaving any flowers, and she's filled with significantly more of that uneasy cold feeling than she can confidently swallow down, and she thinks that given a high enough dose of that wobbly ectoplasm that seems to suffuse everything in his immediate surroundings, she might very well freeze over herself, and forever decorate his console room as a rigid statue, with no chance of her fingers ever reaching his snow-white form.

But if that was not among the things she could do for him, she would simply have to get creative, to use her clever tongue to do what her fingers and lips could not, and use her words and deeds to cross the distance.

She had learned all too bitterly that there wasn't anything she could _guarantee_ , but she had, at least, _promised_ , and that meant that nothing short of scouring every (im)possibility in search of a way she would remotely be able to accept, because she'd shared his journey for far too long to abandon him when things got tough, and this was who she'd chosen to be: She would always come and find him, under technicolor skies, in snow-covered alleyways and behind the veils of his latest barriers, whether he needed her to be the plucky girl willing to endure a long and strenuous journey to procure whatever elixir might be required to melt the sliver of ice in his heart, or the snow queen who would give him refuge in her majestic halls of frost, and silently stand by his side while he spent his days immersed in his puzzles, or turning in heavy dreams.

(By the next time she finds him like that, this time in his armchair, with a seemingly engineering-themed book still in his lap, many months have passed, and the earth has kept turning whether she's been on it or not.

As it frequently happens, some old worries have faded and been replaced by new ones, and more often than not, she found herself looking at the world through changed eyes by the time she returned.

When she looks at him now, she doesn't see age, or frost, or newness.

She merely sees _him_.

With his mouth slightly askew, the sight of him strikes her as oddly endearing and invites comparisons to various other times she'd caught him dozing off, including some occasions on which the hair hanging into his face had been dark and straight; She's not exactly sure just when the memories of his bow-tie-wearing days ceased to be something raw and painful that caused a surge of emotion each time she touched it with her thoughts, or when the default image her mind would summon up when the thought of 'The Doctor' without any further specifiers started featuring this unmistakeably brazen cocky-bastard-grin, accentuated by that particular upward motion of those much-maligned eyebrows. At some point, she'd acutely realized that she'd come to imagine him speaking in that deep, somewhat gruff voice when she tried to picture what he'd say or do in a given situation, simply because that was how she heard him nearly every other day, and when something prompted her to recall any memory in which he'd sounded and looked different, she was usually able to feel mostly nostalgic fondness without any more 'dramatic' emotions drowning it out, as one might when looking back at a precious component of one's youth – Which, she was sure, would undoubtedly prompt him to claim that she was beginning to sound like an old hag, should she ever be foolish enough to say it aloud in his presence.

By now, his particular brand of ridiculousness was more likely to bring a smile to her face than anything else, with an annoyed rolling of her eyes and an attempt at a witty quip designed to annoy him right back being the next likely options.

It was true that she was no longer the young dreamer who had first followed him onto this ship, nor even the firm idealist whose claims of absolutes had begun to crumble by the time this console room had undergone its most recent redecoration; She'd been out in the darkness and gazed down the ravines of this world, and when she returned, she brought with her shadows that licked at her heels and clung to her footfalls, and Night, Daughter of Chaos, had powdered her trusty set of skills with new and creative applications with the potential to make everything so much easier, and yet so, so much harder.

She'd stepped off the path and realized that there were more possible routes to her goals than she'd ever have considered acceptable, and that some of them got the job done quite well, sometimes so well that insisting on whatever useless pride wanted to be able to claim that she'd gotten her on the straight and narrow way seemed criminal. But once abandoned, the way back to the path might no longer be as intelligible, and what she saw from afar upon turning back might even convince her that said path had been an illusion to begin with, and that there was no clear, universally accepted path that would be ideal in every single way;

It was all up to her to find her way through these murky, turbid waters, and one misstep might just have been enough to leave her stranded in the darkness.

She wasn't yet quite sure what to do with it, there had never been any delusions about the possibility that it might not be a good thing in its entirety, but she could not make a confident case for either warming to it or recoiling in disgust, although there had been times where she had been tempted to do just that for each of these possibilities. She did not want to cut off any potential outcomes, nor close the open doors behind her, but none of that changed that she had _adapted_ to this new habitat of hers; She had known very well what she'd been doing when she'd swallowed that pomegranate seed, and now there would always be something that called her back to this dark realm of chalk dust, candle wax and sickly red light, not from the outside, but inside her own heart, no matter how often she might return to walk on the green pastures of the Earth that gave birth to her – The fair, flowery maiden, more cunning and ambitious to begin with than her rosy cheeks and chestnut eyes would have you suspect, had taken root among white poplars, spider lillies and asphodels, and now her branches were heavy indeed, bent by burgundy fruit at their ripest peak, waiting to be picked and placed among the desks and bookshelves that already seemed like something out of a baroque still-life – There were parts of her that only existed here, where she could rule as the iron queen of the underworld without having to hide any of her true power and merit.

And as the more she had become a citizen of the darkness, the more she'd found herself sharing it with its other occupant – No, not its Lord, whatever his cocky ancestors may have chosen to call themselves, but ultimately just another passenger who was seeking the answers just as she was, afraid that none of them might ever find the way out if they let go of each other's hands.

As his fellow and comrade on this journey, she knew that she belonged here now, she knew that she belonged with him, maybe not all, but certainly some of the time, and as such, she carried herself with the poise and confidence of someone fully immersed in their element as she decided just what to do bout him, a thin smile of fondness on her lips as she calmly picked up the book he'd been reading, marked the page for him and placed it on the nearest shelf while inwardly surmising what a hopeless case he was.

There was no longer anything hesitating, or uncertain about the way she procured a light, red-patterned blanket and ensured that he's spend the rest of his nap neatly tucked away beneath it like it was the most natural thing in the world for her, even going so far as to stuff some of it between the backside of his narrow shoulders and the chair to make sure that it stayed in place, and she even thought she could make out her name among the vaguely mumblings this elicited.

She reassured him with an expertly-timed "Shush", and observed as he drifted back into deeper states of unconsciousness, the slight smirk never quite fading from her face.

It wouldn't have been too much of a leap to assume that he was currently imagining her counterpart in his dreams as being far too impressed at whatever ridiculously showy shenanigans he was currently concocting; She couldn't deny that she almost wished she could see it, for whatever it was must have been some sight to behold, given that not even physics or sanity could impose limits on whatever flights of fancy he got up to in his own subconscious, and neither could she pretend that she didn't get a little kick out of having him completely at her mercy like this.

He might have made his enemies believe that he was an invincible immortal, but in the end, he was just a single man – bit harder to kill than your average humanoid and with certain bits advanced technology at his disposal, but that's it – who'd inadvertently stirred up the legend by foiling them with guile, wit and determination, and there he was, filling the space right before her, granting her the rare privilege of witnessing the fragile, vulnerable, or just simply undignified, mundane sides of him that his foes probably didn't even expect to exist, and in that way, they were, unexpectedly, the same, in this experience of not quite filling their own, long shadows, and maybe that affinity was the reason that she always reserved a soft spot for him no matter how much he pissed her off, what made her willing to go such lengths for him and still, always return to that unending well of affection that seemed sometimes incredibly obvious, and sometimes inexplicable.

And even though she knew that this would be mostly for her own benefit, it was the need to _vent_ those feelings and impulses in a tangible form that led her whether that meant to tackle him into submission with an unannounced surprise glomp, or the small, minimal gesture she was beginning to aim at his unsuspecting left cheek right now.

It was just a mere brush with three of her fingers, not enough to wake him but sufficient for him to with a small, soft sound, not exactly discomfort, but still disproportionately close to some derivative of desperation –

She was beginning to figure out how this works now, he might 'overload' fast, but that also meant that she could count on getting definite reactions from the slightest of gestures and touches, she could _make him_ do that with just the backs of her digits, as if she were a shining queen or goddess resplendent in her coruscating finery.

_Her kind of man._

It was moments like this when she found herself regretting that she had missed her chance to make him hers and was highly unlikely to ever get another, but it was a bittersweet, wistful little thought, an occasional longing, not something that would have painfully clogged up her thoughts each time she saw him or made being around him an overall painful experience; There was only so long she could dwell on the things she _couldn't_ have, not when she had been given this rare and precious opportunity to live a full life that allowed her to feel like she was making a difference for the broader world every single day, whether she was inspiring the citizens of tomorrow to strive toward their promising futures, making new experiences, expanding her horizons, fighting the good fight out there in the stars, not when she got to have _him_ for her closest friend and confidant, when she could set out to chase the night alongside him whenever she so desired. )


	10. Transmissions (I)

_Mine eye hath played the painter and hath steeled_

_Thy beauty's form in table of my heart._

_My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,_

_And pérspective it is best painter's art._

_For through the painter must you see his skill_

_To find where your true image pictured lies,_

_Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,_

_That hath his windows glazèd with thine eyes._

_Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:_

_Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me_

_Are windows to my breast, wherethrough the sun_

_Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee._

_Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art;_

_They draw but what they see, know not the heart._

_(24)_

* * *

Stating that she loves the way they communicate wouldn't be something she could do with full confidence or an oath on her complete honesty, and this isn't even a fact that she will struggle to deny. She understands the need to lay out a plan, to see the complete picture, with the past, present, future and the likelihood of various possibilities featured into her considerations, before she makes a statement of the kind that might be a point where she chooses who she wants to be, the kind that she doesn't want to find herself taking back... and in the world of Clara Oswald, that's almost every statement:

She hates being wrong, and even more, she'd hate to become a hypocrite. For once, that would lose her the right to complain about hypocrites, and that would probably leave her seething with impotence to the point of popping some aneurism, given that she loathes them with passion.

Those ideas of what she'd _like_ to be, however, have only so much to do with what is actually the case.

If he and her were something distanced, something she'd read about in a book without any consequences for the real word, the admission would have come easily, without a second thought; It was harder to uphold when that stubborn space dork was getting on her nerves with some everyday annoyances, ridiculous to even think of when she found herself terrified and in tears in some faraway place – But it was ever so easy when she was reclining on the console room jump seat, observing him as he spilled sprawling incoherence upon the blackboards lining the walls, her glance lazily idling somewhere between the cryptic glyphs themselves and his funny lip shape, casually at work with the forming of some words, something related to his pictograms, perhaps, or an introduction to their next destination.

She never used to be comfortable with losing herself, even in something as unassuming as a harmless little moment, but this once, she finds herself atypically content to just drift, to spare herself his rambles and take in their destination when they get there, without any preconceived notions or half-drawn plans based on her incomplete understandings to distract her, almost looking forward to the opportunity for improvisation she always used to dread.

A faraway world where no one might even _know_ of her home or what distance separated them should be the furthest from a 'save haven', but somehow it is, and maybe for today, she'll take his kind of explanation and suppose that it must be the lure of going somewhere where no one knew who she was or where she'd come from, and where everyone who'd chose to gossip and opine about her would do so after she was long gone and never had to see their faces again,

Or perhaps, not quite this, not so much what they wouldn't know, but how what they _would_ know wouldn't be overshadowed, how this was an unique space for her actions to speak for themselves, which even she recognized as sounding a little... vainglorious, but that's a thread of thoughts she can comfortably afford not to follow right now, she might as well delay the spoiling of the fun to some tenuously undefined, nebulous construct of 'later', uncomfortably aware that this is probably what he would do, what she ever so often chided him for.

Unfortunately, this just seems to happen to be the kind of unwholesome effect he has on her.

* * *

But, she must then ask, is this not what she is all about?

Taking that one bold step to say what must be true despite the things that might make her waver?

To make dreams into ideals and ideals into reality, to take the leap that was necessary to convince everyone around her of of her vision of realities yet to come by making them believe that it had already come to pass?

Sometimes it took as little as just the right words in the right place to invite the desired world in the manner of a warlock's summoning incantation, be they the outline of a pep-talk, the vessels of just outrage, transmission of wisdom or her rather daring masterpiece of shaming the remnants of a civilization that could be aptly described as the ultimate results of man growing proud through little more than a diffusely glowing crack – this was most certainly a game she was adept at playing.

In another life, given somewhat less convoluted circumstances, she might have been the sort who would keep her wits even as she was dying, and use the very grief her demise was going to cause to persuade a widower to emotionally engage with the children that had been her charges, and goad a lost wanderer into resuming his journey; A selfless act, certainly, that she would devote even her last moments to setting the world and its inhabitants straight, and courageous, too, as she would have been just as afraid of the end she was facing as those she was trying to influence, but there was another side to it, too, to _utilize_ grief as a means to insert a wedge into someone's thought processes, moreover, the grief about one's own end, as a tool for however well-intentioned manipulation... that took a particular kind of cunning, a suspicious mastery of _words words words_ that allowed her to effortlessly swish them aside because they were the very tool of her craft – In that world, she might openly announce the sunspots of her hearts to those who would listen, none too ashamed of her ideas above her station, or to establish in crisp clarity that there was definitely no sweetness hiding behind the dark pools of her eyes -

The space beyond them was, instead, home to an ever-racing mind, for to subjugate reality to her will, she needed to be certain of the gap between it and her vision, to be aware and assured of its tininess and willingness to be bridged through willpower. To that end, she went through life always taking note, always on guard, always cataloging any buttons to push, useful facts to reconsider, stray umbrellas to ponder and Freudian slips she could exploit later on.

It was through attention paid and conclusions applied then, that he was always able to give the correct answer, always cautious to steer the conversation right where she wanted it to go, always ready to enchant and mesmerize, the peerless, silver-tongued queen of vipers, leaving a trail of hopeless suitors in her wake because she would never share her realm, unless it was with someone who could fully captivate her eyes –

That might have been a romantic idea, at least, for a heroine in a fairytale who would never be remembered beyond the youthful radiance of whatever illustration preceded the reports of her tragic death or the cliched old 'happily ever after', but in reality, it could be a much harder cause to live humbly for the causes for whom one might die nobly – at least that was a chosen, controlled, meaningful end that would be remembered in conjunction with a clear, indisputable accomplishment – the murky fog of the future held no such promises, no certainties but the final one, thus, she could care less about her projected life expectancy, her bones in the burnt, used-up ground or previews of her death;

It wasn't so much the fear of physical destruction or some unwillingness to let him make an impact on her life, after all, she already been ready to let that same life end for his sake; But knowing that she would find an end, that she'd have enough to control to chose the manner, the words and the _meaning_ it would have released her from the burden of having to think of her faraway, uncertain future, or the legacy she would be leaving – Released from all pressure, she could do anything, and the thought of leaving her afterimage burned all over his very existence was comforting, at least, as a way to accomplish what she'd otherwise decided would never work out – But this continuation beyond that day was the only one she would have, this was the life in which she got to live past 24 with no mission left to accomplish.

At 27, she was not scared of the monsters under the bed, but of the future that extended into the mists, both its uncertainty and its restrictiveness; In the real world, even the proud queen was subject to the ticking of the clock, ruling all but herself as she inevitably hastened her collision course with the big thirty through her exploits, and it would be _especially_ the queen who'd get to put up with the wicked stepmother sticking up their noses at her persistent single-ness and associated inability to present someone who could turn up with _clothes_ , let alone that whole idea of picket fences, two dogs and 2,5 children; Three years before, she might have stormed out without a second thought at the first notion of offense, but under Cronus' looming scythe, the world succeeds and convincing her that there is a girl behind that queenly mask who doesn't have much more to show for than her big, troublesome mouth.

Chasing the shadow of a clumsy outcast with a dark, dark secret, she stumbles – what was she expecting, just three weeks later, oh so eager to prove that she was all mature and able to move on – she finds a very different kind of animal which soon becomes popular at his workplace and reveals a very different attitude and philosophy toward life; It _would_ have to have been a man with a sense of presence, a certain wisdom and a place for children in his heart, but although all these boxes were ticked, complete with the added bonus of being very likely to actually wear clothes for any potential encounters with her family, but somehow, it was that very presence that made her shrink into place, a thought meriting further analysis at a later date – How tragic, one might think, that you couldn't seem to have two whole beings together, that at least one always had to leave a piece of themselves behind, to let their shine be dimmed, for the two of them to come together and form a whole, and it seemed that if it wasn't her, it would certainly be him, and he didn't deserve that, didn't deserve to try and decipher her thoughts when she'd left her heart where it has always lain, awaiting her return to a certain blue box, and her mind was, in fact, secretly pondering, only theoretically entertaining the potential plausibility of an alternate scenario that might have, could have been in some life, world or reality that didn't seem to be one of hers;

Woe betide him who did not perceive the brinks of the gravity well on which he was tethering as more than the occasional appearances of an obnoxious inconsiderate weirdo; That insolent crooked finger was an invitation to the dance of the double stars.

* * *

So, back to the drawing boards, then.

Bafflement is not a state she enjoys, utter confusion much less so, but at least it seems to be the same for him, even though the latter is pretty much his default state these days, so, to an extent, he's in the same boat as her, and like any two adults with at least some strands of rationality somewhere deep down, they are able to approach this as a problem to be solved and find themselves looking for a reliable, systematic method to cut through the chaos.

Somewhat less reasonably, he seems to have picked her as such, as the safety rail he hangs on to, so its up to her to avoid the dreaded scenario of the blind leading the blind in endless circles.

That is, at least, _something_ to craft a strategy around - always easier to know what you don't want than what you _do_ , but if there's a goal of avoiding something, she can, at least, apply her usual methods to pushing into the opposite direction.

So she begins her analysis and categorizing, working patterns out of the incoherence, drawing up maps and throwing up the previous ones that had proven incorrect or outdated;

Finding familiar reactions and signals to be absent, she subjects her scrutiny to a face that gives her no answers, like an investigator seeking to use every single one of some defendant's words against them, or some paleontologist trying to reconstruct some creature's appearance and because they had no access to the living whole.

Whatever he's saying, however it may or may not resemble whatever he was saying before, he might as well have stated to speak a completely different language, and it's up to her to decipher its meaning and map out whatever his words and gestures might translate to – So her vigil begins.

* * *

Let's get to know: The Doctor.

Who, as it turns out, is no longer a particularly coherent or sensible person as of now – really, making his previous self look reasonable by comparison is an achievement in and of itself.

There's not much she can do with his frowns or those stares that seem to fall anywhere between quizzical, disproving or simple blunt incomprehension, but little by little, the fog lifts.

That doesn't mean that it's fast or easy, or that she doesn't spend weeks – even months – not picking up what might otherwise have been obvious clues.

He proves to be frustratingly opaque, even when compared to strangers she'd never met before – Her previous progress is not merely undone, it's slowed to the viscous creep of a moving slime mold.

But move it did, sometimes, she did guess right, and apply a comforting little hand or well-meaning question where she thought it might be needed even when it wasn't outwardly obvious; Usually, he'd be trying to concentrate on whatever dangerous business they were dealing with, and that serious focus was all that could be seen on his face or heard in his tone of voice, but things were different, if not necessarily more readable, when they were out of immediate danger, perhaps when he was showing her around their latest destination, or when they found themselves just lightly discussing their plans at her flat.

He's rarely ever completely without a certain tension to him, but there's times when there's less of it, and times where there's more, and he'd have varying degrees of it pulling at his posture, like he was never quite fully comfortable in his skin, and this was rarely more apparent than when she's see him cautiously peering down, his neck in folds, his body otherwise stiffly vertical except for perhaps some sloppy, not quite orthodox positioning of his legs, face usually somewhere between dull mortification and understated dread, plainly not expecting good news, but usually directed at something fairly specific, like, say, her unabashed delight at the sight of a certain green-clad master archer, or general instances of him apparently her actions just as bizarre as she found his, so, at the very least, she wasn't completely alone in this, even if that meant he'd be even less help than his absence would have been; Purely symbolic comforts didn't quite seem to cut it anymore, not always, not sustainedly.

In the beginning, she figured that it made sense, if he, too, was still getting used to it. It was one of those things that got her thinking, how could she leave him, that poor thing? It was only given the passage of some time that it began to dawn on them both that they were stuck like this, with the current state of affairs, with that enforced distance and the passive-aggressive exchanges, or however he would term it; It seemed very much like she was going to be stuck with that man-shaped mass of incoherence. _Vaguely_ man-shaped, a tall and narrow creature that negated all the superficial resemblance there might have existed through the ways and manners the foreign entity within pulled at its conduit to the here and now, for example there was, a close relative to the previously disapproving downward glare, a common sight that came with a similar general posture, perhaps with an optional an authoritative hand on the hip or in the pockets of his trousers, but chiefly distinguished by a somewhat harsher, but also more detachedly- analytical expression, and an odd tilt of his head that reminded her faintly of some predatory bird.

That was perhaps, a more archetypical function, less of an uncertain position, when he knew for sure that he was seeing something he didn't necessarily like, but still succeeded in holding him with a certain morbid fascination, when he seemed calm and in-control even at the wrong end of the occasional laser gun, something she could fit into common scenarios and ideas of hierarchy present in her mind, but there wasn't much more comfort in such an intangible abstraction, the scowling stranger in timeless black;

At least, it wasn't that unusual a role for him to wind up playing in the scheme of things, when in doubt, his tried and true tricks and tactics to negotiating various mortal dangers were always something he – both of them, really – could fall back on, in this private little upside-down world they had sealed themselves into.

And besides, she knew better than anyone that he was usually rather more ridiculous than that, that she had found herself categorizing his frowns should be proof of that. At least that's what she hoped, because she wasn't too keen on the possibility that it could say something about her as well (particularly the 'categorizing' bit – and by now, she was sure that he would never let her hear the end of it) – but be it only for the sake of getting back at him, she would have to mentioned that there was not quite as much dignity about his most typical approach toward experiencing the world, how he'd go about the landscape when he was mostly concerned with investigating and putting the clues together, too direct to be labeled 'hesitant'; but too liable to lapse into unannounced, fast movements for a classification as 'cautions', either.

The word might be 'probing', or indecipherable beyond 'slightly arched forward', face and hands held out before the rest of it, taking in the world wild, deep-set eyes, moving his arms about with wide, abrupt gestures that completely lacked any of the boyish 'floppiness' of his previous incarnation, his stare rarely revealing whether it was focused at some telltale detail somewhere faraway, or nothing at all.

This, at least, seldom denoted actual displeasure or hostility, most of the time he'd simply be trying to concentrate, unabashedly stressed, at most, perhaps even excited, judging by the way he'd speak sometimes, so with time, she stopped seeing this as something unusual or expecting anything else; Even when he _tried_ being nice, he'd inevitably fail due to his complete inability to filter his words and how it combined with his sense of tact and appropriateness, or rather, how those were as nonexistent as ever. Besides, it was one thing to see him pull that act in the face of a situation that was already terrifying enough on its own, without the addition of further big gray-haired stick insects – and he always, _always_ unfailingly found the way to describe the current situation in the most unhelpfully terrifying worlds known to man, managing to make even something as simple as the existence of a moon sound like the premise for a horror movie – and it was another to watch him keeping that same posture up while also running for his life. You can only take a person seriously for so long after seeing them waste the most inappropriate, life-or-death-situation moments looking like he might stumble over his own two feet at any given moment, especially if that person was, allegedly, a grown man.

So, at first, it was a matter of kicking back the ball he'd thrown into her court – if he was going to dispense with the politeness, then he couldn't expect her to bother with it, either, and if he was going out of his way to frustrate her, then it shouldn't surprise him that he'd get to actually witness that frustration now and then, because he'd driven her to the limit of what she could conceal, and she'd wind up tearing her hair out if she didn't find some place to _vent_.

He didn't take the hint, because, _of course_ he didn't, but he didn't seem to terribly miss the politeness, either, or even perceive that much of a difference most of the time, perhaps because he doesn't seem to believe in it anyways – how much of it is a random product of what the regeneration lottery happened to throw up this time, and how much a conscious life decision in the light of his recent experiences, she might never know.

But with time, the current state of affairs starts to register as "normal" the usual deal of the exploits she fills her days with, sometimes more of it than should logically fit into her weeks, and found that she did not necessarily need it to function, either. Not only does she get used to this, she's more likely to answer a forced, incredibly transparent attempt to placate her with forced, unsuccessful attempts at niceties with a raised eyebrow rather than anything resembling delight, and their time together becomes – what it's perhaps always been, but to a stronger, deeper degree: An outlet for parts of herself that couldn't find a home in any of her other activities, and he's as much of a part of it as any of the tasks they get up to.

He can _take_ her, in full, raw and unpolished, and that is – perhaps responsible for the instants of peace she keeps chasing after, even at the price of maintaining this generally stressful life. If he's being a bad influence on her, or offering her liberation each time he comes to whisk her away, she can't say, but at some point, she wakes to a world where these exchanges, this dynamic of sorts, has come to play a fixed part in the orchestra of her life, not all of it, not even a principal part she couldn't do without, but something she'd miss if it were gone one day, something with which her life would always be fuller and freer than it would be without, even if she had all other riches and amenities of this world at her disposal.

In the end, there was no way for him to grab all of himself, and for her to take all of _her_ self, to go back to before they were 'them'; It would be like cutting up a limb, like saying goodbye to the parts of herself that had become a part of him – She could live without them, certainly, there were many people out there who, after the investment of some hard work, eventually continued their lives just fine despite the loss of a limb, but it wouldn't leave her unchanged, she would never be the same.

If she were to cut him off, she would bleed, and that was exactly what she'd been trying to avoid.

* * *

The things that are easier to make out, are, to her surprise, not those which stayed the same –

those will always come wrought in a package of uncertainties, doubts about just how far these similarities went and lines that may or may not be about to be unwittingly crossed –

but those who come with clear counterparts, indications of just what has been switched for what and what she needed to substitute to get some rough equivalent of their previous daily proceedings.

They gave her both patterns she could analyze and work with, and allowed her to cushion any wounds that might still be too raw to be touched again just yet – The patterned blouses and jackets she had bought because the prints had reminded her of his bow ties still filled her drawers, and it would be just plain silly for her not to wear them, to let this stop her from getting on with her life like a grown adult who owed perfectly good clothing that cost her money, which a teacher's salary didn't exactly provide infinite quantities of, but she was not quite ready to let herself feel the brunt of this realization and mentally debate the merits of carrying on an legacies by herself, or consider too thoroughly that she would likely never see him straightening any of these damn things ever again.

Bottom line: They were no longer there; He no longer did that, and even if he were to don a bow tie for some formal outing, it just wouldn't be the same and might just tear her heart in two if she were ever forced to witness that.

But there was something else he did _instead_ , some little vain thing, something she could connect to a similar thought or spirit: She didn't now what had possessed him to opt for that red lining, but he apparently thought that it was a pretty great idea, and given how he acted, at least some of its flashiness had to have been intentional – But when he thought he was having a particularly cool little moment, when he was in some mood for some showing off, he'd make sure to do something with that jacket, just to draw attention to it, or even when there was nobody present whom he might impress, just as a psychological thing, for his own ego, because he liked himself in the role, like the stage performer you might expect that ridiculous jacket to belong to – He might stuff his hands in his pockets to flash the bright color to the world, or he might otherwise fiddle with his jacket in some way, open it up if it was closed before, close it if it was open, just any kind of demonstrative little gloves-coming-off gesture for the sake of gesturing.

That was something she recognized from before, but more importantly, it was something that made her smile, something she could recognize when others did not – He might seem all serious and commanding, even imposing, as far as his expression and tone of voice went, but there was just no taking him seriously after she'd caught him fixing his outfit in the middle of an epic speech, he just could not suffer to save the day without an impeccable getup.

This _was_ indeed the same man who'd interrupted a significant phone call intended to calm her down for a minor vanity related freakout about his hair, but by now, this was besides the point: He had always been showy, but she was used to him doing it in a sort of casual, cheeky way, and seldom quite this brazen, even petulant; There were a few vague flashes in her head involving black leather jackets, horrid yellow stripes and far too many frills, but all in all, he was showing her a new side of himself, not even bothering to make it a secret that he wanted her to see only him, watch only him as he strove to impress her with his absurd exploits, look at only him and possibly pat him on the shoulder for how awesome he was being – not literally of course.

It was not that wanting itself, he had implied, if not outright indulged his own transparency before, but it was the almost obnoxious openness, the direct deliberateness that was new, and, to this extent, perhaps even unprecedented.

(What a rare and charming trait, she thought, once the greater picture had become more clear to her; He could stomach it if she were to honor others with her attachment, he could suffer others to touch her, but when it came to her awe and admiration, her heart and soul, let alone her will and intellect, he just _could not_ compromise.

What a gem, in this world where many men still confused the moment a woman let them lay hands on her body with an occasion on which she would have thrown all her honor an self-respect at their feet; She had a will to choose, too, and all the devotion she would ever give would be _chosen_ , not taken, however deep its well might be)

* * *

As a general principle, she came to conclude that she had a much better chance of guessing what he was thinking or feeling by looking at his hands than by examining his expression or his tone of voice – in his wild gestures, she could find the excitement that was once so very close to the surface, but when he was uncertain or doubtful, his hands would stay close to the rest of him, often stuck together, fingers intertwined, thumbs displaying some fitful motions, with a hand near his face and mouth representing a particularly dim sigh.

In such moments, his inward sort of posture would often underline his narrow, partially tucked-up shoulders, and how his hands, in their tangled state, with his stock of gnawed-on fingernails on display, seemed far too big for anything that one might expect to be attached to his lanky frame, a crumpled, disproportional thing, both the mass of his clasped hands and everything else about him.

Once she caught on to this, those more withdrawn hand gestures showed themselves to be quite a reliably present, and, in hindsight, an often-missed predictor of impending bombshells, looming problems he felt were out of his hands or had no uncomplicated solutions, admissions of truths she wouldn't like, all in all a convenient litmus test to confirm her suspicions that he was, quite frequently, _significantly_ more affected, even disquieted by the dreadful going-ons they encountered than he was willing or able to express.

He might not even be consciously aware of the minute vents through which his tension, doubt and uncertainty found their ways to bleed through, if he appreciated her tentative attempts to calm him with a steady hand on his arm or chest, his face wouldn't show it, but if nothing else, it gave _her_ a pretext to let out the breaths she didn't know she had been holding – It was an arrangement they could both work with, a silent, natural understanding that passed between them as two individuals who had learned to tie themselves into artful knots for the sakes of those who might look to them for strength; For those who depended on them – including each other – neither of them could afford to waver, or to take the time for dramatic dawdling.

When trying to build a bridge by baring her own example, she would tell the young children and lost souls of this world that the last time she ever tasted the fear of being lost was back when her mother had consoled her on the day she'd been forced to face that worst-case scenario, in hopes that they might be more successful in that respect than she had been, but the truth was that she felt the chills licking at her spine whenever she encountered anything resembling a maze, let alone the reaches of the empty void – but at the very least, her mother's example had equipped her with the _tools_ she needed to master that sort of situation, the strategies to keep the panic from taking over. In the blackest hours, out in the deep dark of the cosmos, the presence of another person had to suffice – as long as there was someone with her, not even in a tangible way, not even through an overt acknowledgment, not even right before her, but at least _somewhere out there_ , she should be able to keep it together. His simple, silent presence, his mere existence, even just the promise of his arrival was all she would need – In the past, there had been numerous incidents where she'd had to brave the shadows on her own, sometimes without prior warning, and sometimes without the means to make sense of his reasoning at the time, but in the end, she knew that he would always have her back, and she had spend a long time trying to make him understand that she would always have his, wherever he went and whatever he may become in this world.

She'd consecrated herself to the hard, taxing work of getting that into that thick skull of his, her dedicated labor of excavating his layers of sediment and sunken palaces, and she was making steady progress – These days, he sought her in ways as minute as the simplest eye contact, just a brief, firm glance held between them before he carried on with whatever urgent situation had put him in that much of a state to begin with, but by the time he'd turn away, her watchful eye with its intricate understanding of detail in general, and the nuances of his particularities specifically would have noticed him easing up somewhat, or as close to it as he ever came when the situation _did_ allow for it.

It wasn't much, but it was enough for their purposes, and under the circumstances, it _had_ to be.

* * *

And thus, she'd learned his language anew.

She'd familiarized herself with a new set of intricacies, learned what to make of the little gesture she'd provisionally dubbed a 'face shrug' because it indicated just about the same thing as a regular one, but involved little motion other than a raising of his eyebrows over his usual blank stare.

She'd taken note of his propensity to forget about the lower half of his mouth when particularly indignant so she could watch out for the string of amazingly rude hostility that usually followed, given that his recent dissatisfaction with his own reflection had put his ego in a somewhat touchy state as of late. Her best bet was to try and remove him from the equation somehow; Expecting him not to provoke the other person into equal hostility was futile, the only indicator that he was, in fact, a grown man manifested itself in the unprecedented crudeness of his words – She'd heard things come out of his mouth that damn near disproved her faith in humanity, things which his previous self could not even have pronounced without an inordinate amount of blushing and stuttering.

One might assumed that people were more forgiving of his rampant vanity in the centuries he'd spent looking like a cute, nonthreatening puppy with an incidentally gorgeous butt, let alone in the days his the very, very distracting 'sand shoes' incarnation, but paradoxically, it was all the more apparent now that he found himself disproportionately miffed over his eyebrows – in Clara's opinion, a sure sign that his ideas of his own hot stuff credentials had gone unchecked for far too long. Nothing made him quite as much of a pain to deal with than a state of moderately bruised pride.

But for her to buy his staunch denial that he looked any day over her own 28 years, he was enjoying his recent reliance on the tried-and-true "Screw politeness, I'm a senior!" excuse way too much, although really, any pretext to justify his usual randomness was fine by him as long as he got his weekly share of opportunities to gratuitously terrify people.

Really, she could stick him in her average classroom full of rambunctious 15-year-olds, and he'd fit right in with his choice of jumpers, his scruffy, standity-uppity hair and his persistent refusal to act like a sensible person.

Speaking of his hair – contrary to her initial impressions, she was forced to concede that he actually _did_ put some at least nominal effort into the maintenance of his hair, nay, even regularly spent some time putting it in varied styles before turning up in her cupboards. Those temporary arrangements could fall anywhere between vertical, more elaborate modern asymmetrical styles, elegantly swept-back, or something less voluminous, more patrician-looking, but in the end, his head seemed to be host to some Harry-Potter-esque, inherently chaotic quality than ensued that his unruly locks could not maintain any semblance of order for long, and his tendency to get himself unannounced drenched covered in alien goop didn't help, nor did his habit of running his long fingers over his face and straight into his hair when exhausted or exasperated.

She really wished he'd stop doing that, except she really didn't, but would have felt right to cherish the sight as her private little fantasy he would never know of if it wasn't a gift that was willingly given, but just a momentary coincidence.

If he knew, he'd probably take a moment to lick his lips with a hard expression and furrowed brows, which by now, she'd found to be his way of denoting something like "Okay, this is gonna suck" or "I'm apparently not getting out of this easily" - She quite distinctly remembers that gesture from their reunion in the restaurant-slash-den-of-the-killer-droids, possibly the first time she personally witnessed it, when it finally dawned on him that the conversation wasn't exactly going his way, or maybe it was something she'd said – Yes, of course, the vanity button, hindsight is 20/20 – his hair or something, this – vanity, not hair – being what probably landed both of them there in the first place. He was quick to press it right back, too, in a way he'd never have done it before, but also, not entirely out of order for her closest confidant of over three years to poke fun at in a moment of annoyance, three years, three years _for her_ , a lifetime for him, you'd think he'd have earned that privilege by now - ("It was the only one out of place, I'm sure you'd want it killed."), and they'd been sort of stuck in passive-aggressive mode ever since – that's how they'd stayed, locked into their cacophonies of disharmony, always missing each other by the slightest margin.


	11. Transmissions (II - Rafflesia)

_My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;_  
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;  
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;  
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.  
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,  
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;  
And in some perfumes is there more delight  
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.  
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know  
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;  
I grant I never saw a goddess go;  
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:  
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare  
As any she belied with false compare.

(Sonett 130)

* * *

So, there are areas where they can more or less manage;

That didn't mean there weren't any uphill battles – There were still very much moments where she still felt keenly aware of the disparity, moments in which it became obvious, and moments in which some thought or idea that was no longer quite possible would sneak up on her.

The most common circumstance to make notice that things had changed was, perhaps not the most profound, if you will, but just something that came up, was a somewhat regular component in the scenes of his arrival; These days, he was liable to show up in the nearest storage room whenever he felt like it, only to evaporate for a week and a half and turn up at the most inopportune moment ever in the middle of some important meeting or conversation; Granted, his trusty time machine provided him with the perfect excuse to ignore the concept of inopportune moments restrained only by whatever remained of her sense of propriety, which, despite, or maybe exactly because of the limited reliability of the TARDIS and its pilot, was not very much.

There was still, however, the occasional occasion on which he'd actually stick to the schedules, - or fail to stick to them so badly that he'd show up just when she was getting ready for something completely different

– and he would arrive to find her at her vanity table, adding the last finishing touches to today's look, and he'd even linger in the doorway, scrutinizing her turns and motions with unreadable glances that were not even devoid of light, but more in the vein of an enthused observer who couldn't tear his eyes from the object of study, except, perhaps, to briefly express his bemusement, 'those silly humans', or something of the sort, a treacherous part of her hoped that it would at least be 'silly Clara' in particular, but she would, without fail, carefully slide the last rings onto her fingers, only to turn away from the mirrors, dexterous little feet closing part of the distance between them as they spun and dragged the petals of the dress behind, red cloth and black polka dots only coming to a halt once they had arrived the desired position before him, arms partially stretched to her sides, bracelets in golden and coppery shades twinkling at her wrists –

Even the times she'd been gearing her preparations toward someone, some _thing_ else, it wouldn't take more than the slightest,spontaneous nudging of a whim for her to dedicate her efforts to hi instead.

There was something about his presence that made it impossible for her, and her in particular, to ignore his existence, some natural ease, a recognition of a deep and fundamental truth, a part of her that felt that she would be intersecting with, or stepping into a much smaller story when she went to see what awaited her one she walked out that door, not uninteresting, not without its worth or its heroes, but smaller in scale and priority, smaller, by which she didn't primarily mean smaller than him or his story, but smaller than hers, so hers would be wasted if she didn't take advantage of the worthy one until the blue box had departed.

She spent years perfecting her ways of hiding from those who would _presume -_

She liked attention and adoration, she loved to bask in power. That didn't mean that she was willing to get them at any cost, or that she would throw a childish hissy fit if those things didn't come her way.

She had a wanting heart, she went through life _striving_ with all of her might. That didn't mean that she didn't have the will and capacity to devote herself in full.

She may have held wisdom and had some success at being a strong, high tower for those who'd seek refuge and support in her care, but that didn't mean that not a single of her actions had ever been born from a raw and vulnerable mess of wounded, jumbled feelings.

That she wasn't a naive ingenue, but a professional adult with firm ideas didn't mean that she had to hand in her curiosity, her readiness to try new things or her drive as a _seeker,_ and neither was there was any mutual exclusion between being concerned with the larger patterns of the occurrences in this world and her duty to the individuals living in it.

Just because she thought highly of herself and wasn't afraid to show that, that didn't mean that she'd think less of others or intended to prove she was 'better' than them.

They didn't seem able to get it into their heads that a person who would be genuinely clumsy at some things could be unnervingly sharp at others, their perceptions engineered contradictions or contrasts from things that, in reality, flowed from one and the same source.

The world she lived in had no place for people like her, or indeed very many people that didn't fit into a very arbitrary set of narrow outlines that even the more typical people only fit in very roughly; And she knew from her steady observations that there were few things they were less likely to forgive than something and little they were more likely to reject than something that was too hard to pin down for them to label; Many people would rather have closure than details to order and absorb.

Given the choice between 'two-faced manipulative bitch' or 'flighty cutesy airhead', she could tolerate to let some think the former and let it be their loss, if they could not see the timeless quality of her dresses and how they existed outside, let alone form an image that would actually account for the footwear beneath, overlooking the shiny black biker boots that were always ready to spring into action even when she'd sit there at the library, immersed in dreams and stories of faraway worlds.

But now that _he_ had arrived, she could either go out there and dwell among people who probably thought she was sickeningly sweet on the inside, and that all she needed or wanted were some strong arms to guide her and tuck her in so she could sleep in safely, or she could go with him, and be seen in her entirety for a while, have herself be experienced, if never comprehended let alone mastered; It was quite alright if he was confounded by her (or humanity in general) as long as he didn't stop looking at them with a degree of underlying reverence and fascination, besides, she liked to keep him guessing.

It wasn't as if the fulfillment of her life stood or fell with his opinion, she'd make sure to nip it in the bud – violently, with extreme prejudice – if he ever got _that_ cocky, but she liked to set her own goals, and she liked to set some of them _high._

Through effort and continuous refinement of the advantages she had been given to begin with, she'd won the admiration of many different people wherever she had gone, and on occasion, even drawn their eye, but far and in-between as it might be any recognition she successfully tease out of someone as accomplished and – as of recently – superficially impassive as him would make for a particular trophy she'd be sure to cherish proudly.

"So, how do I look?"

The parts of her concerned with making her life make sense in the context of a clear and defined narrative that would eventually arrive at a goal she could actually state with a straight face – she wouldn't go so far as to call them her rational mind – figured that she might as well use the convenient presence of a friend for a safe, risk-free test run, but that narrative, whether it was accurate or not, could only make sense that his recent track record in such matter had slipped her mind – Had she been more conscientious, she would have known not to expect any exception today, and as ever so often, she turned out very much right –

He goggled forward, ostensibly considering the point with some amount of concentration assigned to the task, and already it was apparent that she might not be getting the much simpler, less over-thought answer almost everyone else would have understood her question to request, but curiously, that didn't diminish her interest in his potential answer; She braced herself for shortages in terms of dignity, but also found herself genuinely wondering what awaited her this time –

"Orange."

"Seriously?"

She blinked a few times before it occurred to her that he probably meant her dress, which, for the record, looked pretty much red to her. Light red, admittedly, _maybe_ with the slightest orange tinge.

"Orange- _ish,_ " he conceded, as if that might placate her. "Possibly salmon."

Now, the whole incident isn't worth much more than a momentary sigh of frustration, but that frustration is sometimes there, not always, but _sometimes_ , and then again, she knows very well that she's not an insecure teenaged girl or some stereotypical fishing for compliments; She knows very well that she's attractive, which is also reflected in the way she is treated by most of the adult people she interacts with; And even if she weren't , there were significantly more relevant qualities a person could lack. If anything, the joke was on him, really, because alien or no alien, however he may or may not perceive them, he had been living among humans for a long, long time and should at least have gotten the rough gist of the etiquette.

Half of the time, he didn't even _intend_ to be insulting, but that didn't excuse him from the definitely deliberate refusal to even check his various wordings for their insult potential before opening his mouth; But she figured that his cluelessness could sometimes be endearing. Depending on her mood, she might shrug it off as a minor annoyance, annoy him right back, even smile about it – but that was when she wasn't posing for him, which was, all things considered, very common; He'd see her in her bedroom, in the storage rooms of her workplace or on the stairs of the console room, with a slight, teasing tone to her voice, brows raised somewhere between 'suggestively' and an expression of superiority, with the lightest deliberate swing to her hips, quite often in the middle any given exchange that fell more into the lighthearted end in the spectrum of their banter.

Something kept her going at what might very well have been a futile endeavor even as a playful, cheeky annoyance of sorts, or, at least, an ineffective method of communication, and in her more innocent moments, she attempted to explain it with the simple proposition that she simply _forgot_ sometimes, especially once they were more or less back to functionally getting along with a certain regularity, because things had been different for three long years and there used to be this reaction she could reliably expect and leverage for her own purposes, or even just her cheap amusement – His poorly concealed crush had been _flattering_ , for sure, but that was, or ought to have been, a nice bonus, all things considered, not unappreciated but besides the point.

There was a time where those same carefully placed hints of provocation would have been enough to reduce him to the incoherence of a stuttering, flustered schoolboy and turn his face a bright and obvious shade of dark magenta that his usually ivory cheeks did little to conceal.

Now, this reaction simply wasn't there, along with many others she'd learned to count on; There might have been different reactions but she was thrown back to square one when it came to ordering them, maybe not _exactly_ back to the start, but this proved harder than it had been the first time.

He was, back then, a bit of a loose cannon, the type to follow his various impulses in a knee-jerk reaction, he'd just whirr about the room with little thought to what it looked like or what he was even doing, and while he might sometimes seriously intend to hold back, she'd catch him consciously trying, and never quite succeeding to restrain himself, whether it was the obvious effect of her womanly wiles, something potentially suicidal that peeked his curiosity, and injustice he couldn't walk past, a smug remark he couldn't help making, however self-consciously the final result would look or just something that looked incredibly _fun_ and _distracting_ and appealed to the childlike side of his personality –

She was working with a completely different sort of energy these days, he had a way of just standing there now, seemingly unaffected, until reactions just suddenly arrived before she could see them coming, leaving her with little time, or prior warning, to do anything about them. When he acted, it might be sudden, in a wild, startling fashion, or come with a detached, delayed quality, like his heart(s) and mind were barely even connected to their early vessel and really lost somewhere else, drifting aimlessly in faraway spheres – in general, his temperament seemed to be one of the things that varied the most between his various incarnations – She'd encountered the one just before the form he showed up on her doorstep with, and he'd seemed much more capable of resisting the urge to unduly embarrass himself, so that he actually succeeded at pulling off a certain air of genuine gentlemanly elegance, but he was still relatively hyper, something that wasn't true at all for the him from the time when he'd just walked out of the Time War, but they were both noticeably more sensible and considerate than any of 'her' versions had ever been, especially the latest model which didn't seem to share any of the warmth that had been a constant of the three others – and while he certainly didn't fit the 'hyper' bill any longer, Clara had little doubts that 'Captain Grumpy' would have found him every bit as undignified and head-shake-worthy as a previous two –

But alright. She figured that some degree of weirdness couldn't be avoided when you were hanging out with a man from another planet, particularly when he happened to be such an... unique individual, she'd learned early on that he couldn't always be expected to make all too much sense, but there was something about this recent situation that seemed to bug her in a more fundamental way than it really had any right to, not in a way that would have been an immediate tragedy, but – something that just equaled a cumulative sort of irritation each time she couldn't quite get him to respond.

Not because seeing him turn magenta on cue was mainly what she'd wanted out of their relationship, but because all of this forced her to confront the fact that she _liked_ to _make_ people turn magenta, or any number of other things – if he took the bait, the joke was sort of on him, but since he'd taken to barely reacting at all, she saw herself standing there like an orphaned punchline followed by silence instead of a laugh track, keenly aware of her own actions and countless places where she might have gone wrong, made to examine and question every little tidbit of potential signals she might have transmitted over -

And still, he got the privilege to see the mask of makeup, gestures and presence she presented to the world in the process of being assembled, when everyone else, no matter how close to her, could only ever hope to glimpse the finished product – He'd arrive and find her in the middle of preparing tomorrow's lessons, or leaning back on her sofa for a much needed ten-minute break from the day's stress. He'd witness her in the middle of the night, in her pajamas with her hair undone, although he could expect to get yelled at if he woke her in the morning hours of what she expected to be a busy day. She'd allow him to observe, with confounded fascination, how her existence unfolded in his realm as well as hers, in the abstract as much as in the concrete – despite her rocky start with the ship itself, she found its near-unlimited store of clothing quite delightful and since she first stumbled on the place on one of the wild goose chases in search for her bedroom, she'd rarely resisted the urge to get herself some appropriate period costume and go crazy with the local aesthetics. He'd obviously never see the point in that, his policy being to wear whatever he felt like and, if needed, could always manage to prove himself sufficiently competent - or at least intimidating enough – for people to listen to him anyway.

Most of the time, he seemed blissfully ignorant that there was anything odd about his wardrobe, although he had this tendency to regret his last fashion choice as soon as he'd picked the next one, in a manner reminiscent of a teenager proving themselves juvenile exactly _because_ of their overzealous urge to discard all childish things, only to turn to viciously hating whatever all the 14-year-olds were raving about by the time they turned sixteen and burned their own paraphernalia from that time. Clara made a point to discourage that tendency in her students, telling them that they might just come to look at the madness of their youth with fond nostalgia and regret that they didn't save any keepsakes – The things she had left from her mother were probably Clara's most prized possessions; When he'd taken her to a world where people used mementos as a currency, she'd been horrified; When she'd seen him give away his favorite fob watch without a moment's hesitation, the mere thought gave her an irrational sort of chill that made it very hard to act natural in his presence, that he could discard that palmful of memories she herself still inwardly mourned over, days they'd lived together and appart, its weight in _meaning_ with such carelessness disturbed her – He'd told her, just before the transformation finished, that he'd never forget that last chapter of his life, but by the next time she found him in a halfway lucid state, it seemed like he'd already forgotten, the days past drained away like the memories of a dream from long ago, or the memory of swirling leaves long buried beneath the dark, barren branches of unyielding winter.

Back then, that was what he'd just emerged from, and all she could recognize when she looked at hi, all that seemed to be left of the man she once loved: Barren, unyielding winter.

Palaces of dead trees and withered gardens that could give nothing, nor even receive anything she could possibly have to give.

It was only later that she came to see the pattern, put in in context and realize that he was _never_ particularly treasuring with things pertaining to himself – the vitriol he reserved for the judging and characterizing of his own person was more acerbic than anything he'd ever spewn at any other person, and maybe that willingness to criticize himself, a trait not uncommon in many great artists and discoverers of the past, was what kept him pushing himself to more greatness every day. Maybe it was where the consistency came in, where she came to see an odd sort of purity where she'd last expect it, in that he'd subject his own life to the same sort of icy weighing scales as everything else and always unfailingly chose to take the bullet himself should the option exist.

When their trip to the bank of Karabraxos wound up revealing that he was a lot more insecure about his wardrobe choices than he ever let on, it made an unexpected lot of sense to her.

He still wore them, though, which was probably indicative of how little he cared about what anybody else might think of him and how little the concept of fitting in wherever they were going interested her – As far as she was concerned, she would insist on being the voice of reason as far as that could be expected to lead to anything productive, but more than anything else, getting into costume was part of the game for her, it was a part of the fun that appealed to her inner little girl – (And he'd remark, that this reminded him of certain friends of his which had also had a thing for costumes, to which he quickly added that said friends had ended up hitting him with cricket bats and throwing him off tall towers, lest she get any illusions that it was meant as a sort of compliment.)

And most of all, she liked the idea that she could _transform_ , and mold herself, and the aura she exuded to others, into something of her own making, especially when it happened faraway from her home and its promises of permanent consequences, in realms that allowed her to forget about some of the more neurotic elements and just have _fun_ with what she could create in terms of perceptions, and just like that, her efforts to learn about him had taught her a little something about herself again:

When she came to greet him with her bracelets and rings, her hair polished to shine and possibly dolled up with any number of modifications, straightened or made to curl, done up in great elaborate knots or simply tied back, garnished with decorations or interwoven with extensions, it was because she liked to see herself that way, liked to admire her reflection and show herself to the residents of their destinations, for its own sake, since she was going to be making myths and leaving impressions anyway, she could very well revel in pimped-out dresses, futuristic bodysuits, and her favorites from her very own wardrobe – if he arrived without much announcement, she'd readily leave in the more professional little blouses and sweatshirts she wore for work, that were already a result of deliberate image-crafting, but when given the time to prepare, she'd pick the most poetic of her patterned dresses and the most tough-looking of her trusty leather-jackets, and her big black boots, always ready for action.

She was always performing wherever she went, and while she might have become more assured in her calculations that when she first started this hobby, and thus less likely to discuss the 'plot' with herself, she always tried to guess the rules of the narratives and try to keep up with the thinking – but only here did she get the chance to dress for the genre without having to explain herself. The two of them would be unexplained enough as they were – and maybe in that sense, their ideas of fashion or presentation connected, and that might be another reason why she wanted to be seen by him in particular, no matter how much she would do this for its own sake.

So she'd let him observe as she picked out her dresses, even if his input was rarely of any help, and continued to pose and coquette around even when she'd long figured out that she was unlikely to get any more than bemused stares.

It wasn't a matter of hopelessly pining away after tragic dreams and breaking herself over it, a little girl building sandcastles to decorate the great, vast sea that would uncaringly sweep them away – and even then, it wouldn't be the sea's fault that it was at it was, and even it deserved to be given a little gesture of treasuring, now or then, as a matter of principle, it was the thought that counted and that might just be abstract enough to build a bridge between her world and his. But more importantly, she wasn't some melancholy dreamer admiring him from afar, she knew him, in all of his immediate, everyday silliness, odd little habits and tendencies that got on her nerves.

He would never be completely disenchanted to her because at times, he proved just as awesome as he claimed to be, and there was a vastness to him, his history, and his entity, a particularly cavernous instance of the inner universe that could be found within _any_ other person, and there were moments where she was awed that he could still surprise her with new sides of himself after she'd read stretches of his diary, learned so many of his secrets, visited his darkest hours and woven herself into the full length of his story; Even now, she was piecing together the basic outlines of his life story from his many cryptic references, taking note of odd habits and little hiding places (not all that unexpectedly, his hidden stash of sweets proved harder to locate than his spare TARDIS keys) and noting the methods and details in _his_ shroud of glitter, until she could have worn his modus operandi like a glove – and he knew it, too, and was never all too delicate when it came to displaying it –

("Haven't the foggiest, do clever thing!"

"I think I can fix this, just go get that strawberry jam you snatched last week." - ("You sure you haven't just misplaced it? I mean, have you met you?") - "Only you would rearrange my jelly babies by color. Not just a control freak, but a neat freak as well!")

She'd brought her smarts and her approach to facing down the darkness herself, but it was _him_ who taught the woman who once thought that people always had plans the value of improvisation, and it wasn't too long before she turned it back on him.

From the beginning, she'd never been too shy to speak with confidence of what she could deduce about him, and so she had some grounds to suspect that the efforts of her and her 'orange-ish' dress weren't talking at a wall here – It had to be a language he understood, because he spoke it himself, so he must clearly have been aware of the concept.

She saw him, quite clearly, trying to impress her, in many ways by many means, some of which included posing and dressing up nicely – if anything, he'd become a lot more brazen and unapologetic about it since the regeneration, or as a simple result of the passage of time.

One way or another, he was provoking _her_ to the face and she would not let herself be outdone; She wouldn't let that challenge slide, so she had to answer back, transmit the signal back on all channels figuring that he was bound to pick up some of them, and she knew that he'd put up those satellite dishes, hoping to pick something up.

She was still very much trying to get a hang of the being that lived and moved behind his aura, the man himself beneath all decorations, protective barriers and necessary acts.

The initial impression that he wasn't paying attention to her at all was easily dismissed, rather, he did in patterns that were as erratic as him. The tasks he trusted her with and the words he'd use to comment on them revealed the extent of his professional respect for her as a partner in crime almost casually, as if it were some obvious thing he wouldn't have to mention unless it came up in conversation, and yet, he succeeded to piss her off with the disregard involved in the way he made the decisions by himself, whether he thought she was 'brilliant on adrenaline' or not, but that, too, ended up ensuring that she'd seize any of those rare chances to one-up him when they happened to present themselves, whether they involved their wardrobe, leadership skills or even fancy computer antics, and in contrast to his bow-tie-wearing days, his current self was a lot more willing and serious about annoying her right back and returning her provocations if they were of the sort that he _was_ likely to pick up, even if some of them now earned her jabs at her vanity instead of conspicuous blushes.

She could console herself with the knowledge that he was every bit as vain in his own ways, and over time, enough fiddling with the wires revealed the frequencies on which he _was_ receptive, sometimes, she couldn't help but stumble over them – He liked it when she left some of her belongings on the TARDIS, although the possessive pronouns were rarer these days, she would still very much hear them now or then and while he might refuse to cease his ramblings about earth's pudding-brained engineers until he was finished with it, he never really said no to fixing her household appliances.

It turned out that he noticed when she changed her shampoo (and would remark on it in he weirdest way possible, in _public_ ), and of all the details he could have managed not to miss, he noticed the two she wanted to acknowledge the least, her latest tendency to conceal certain parts of herself when it was a certain someone else she was preparing herself for.

Of course, he formulated it in roundabout ways that might leave one guessing what he was talking about, but he noticed her straying for her trademark choice of footwear, or her more minimal, decidedly-accentuating style of make-up. He only seemed capable of perceiving the roughest gist of them and what they might meant, and it mostly confounded him, but notice he did, and that, too, prompted her to ask herself uncomfortable questions.

A part of her tried to convince the rest that it was only normal and to be expected that someone would put (even?) more thought into their appearance and image when they were in love, you were sort of supposed to change, and lose your balance a bit, this had to mean that this was a sigh that this was finally, the _real, serious_ thing she was supposed to build a future with in which any previous, school-boyish dalliances would come to look like a learning process that had lead her where she was supposed to get –

(But she'd never felt the need to hammer herself into shape in those last three years, and it hurt her heart to dismiss their importance, to mark every flutter of her heart at the sight of that sweet, tentative smile as an unwelcome distraction)

It was outright hilarious, how he could deduce incredible things from the slightest details that no one else might even have noticed, but when asked to process the sight of her in her entirety, could rarely come up with anything more eloquent than 'Orange'.

And yet, he'd always have a tendency to miss the most incredibly obvious things, no matter how absurdly brilliant he could be when it came to more exotic topics of conversation – His expertise in a given thing did often seem to be directly proportional to its weirdness, with maintaining a semblance of normalcy being one of the tasks he was less likely to accomplish; That particular trait was just somewhat more pronounced with his latest incarnation.

And there's another superpower: Missing the forest for the trees.

Practiced, refined and perfected through literally ages of experience...

When it came to him, she sometimes genuinely didn't know whether to be awed or resigned.

There were many failings she could accuse him of, but there could be no doubt that the man had truly made the most of what he'd been given, both the privileges and the limitations, and she admired that about him. And more than anything, certainly more than she'd ever dare to admit, she feared that she might not be able to claim the same by the time she'd have become an old lady.

She wondered if he'd be flattered if he knew that. Pompous as he could be, it was possible. Or he might be repulsed by the very idea. Or just bitterly remark that there was nothing worth admiring about him, because he was that sort of idiot.

She wondered if he _could_ be flattered anymore. Maybe she simply had yet to work out what 'flattered' or 'stunned' even looked like on the new hardware, and she had _already_ witnessed him displaying such emotions right in front of her, if there was indeed anything like that left inside of her.

("Come to think of it..." he'd continued the conversation when she'd long stopped expecting it, bringing her train of thoughts to a crashing halt. "Actually, I think the dress suits you quite well, it reminds me of a flower." he remarked, completely offhandedly, like it was the most incidental of observations. It was astonishing how he could make that simple sentence seem so surreal just by having it come out of his mouth.

Did he just _happen_ to say something actually appropriate by random chance?

"A... flower?" she repeated, raising her brows in disbelief. "Would that be an _Earth_ flower, by any chance?"

Knowing him, it might be some carnivorous alien mutant plant that vaguely resembled something out of _Super Mario_. Or so she thought.

"Coincidentally, yes. It's a bit like a rafflesia, don't you think?"

"A rafflesia...?!" If that was meant to be some sort of stealth insult, he should really have accounted for the fact that at least some of all those books about the sights of this world she'd liked to read as a young girl were likely to list the 'single blossom with the world's largest circumference' as a common fun fact. The mere act of talking over her head like this with some term that he didn't expect her to understand – or did he _expect_ her to be familiar with it, even count on it? – should have been insulting enough in its sheer presumptuous smugness, but he seemed oblivious to even the distinct tinge of indignation in her voice, and rambled on, apparently blissfully unaware that he was just digging himself deeper with every word.

"Yes. Definitely a rafflesia. Come to think of it, that strikes me as the perfect flower for you! It's a really _flashy_ sort of flower, it's huge, it smells very strongly of rotten meat as a means to attract many, many flies to pollinate it, so it' a real eye-catcher. And a nose-catcher, too, I suppose. It's also sort of roundish, and on top of that, the flower is almost the complete plant. Just like your face is all eyes sometimes..." he elaborated, gesturing with his right hand to implicitly refer to that supposed wideness of her face.

Typical. The only way he could possibly anything resembling a successful compliment would involve comparing her to a parasitic carrion plant.

She rolled her eyes.

At this point, it began to dawn on him that his genius idea for an answer that would placate it wasn't quite as convincing as he'd assumed it to be, and he tried, somewhat clumsily, to amend it into something workable. "But mostly, it's because rafflesias tend to be a sort of orange-ish red with white dots. Just like your dress. And other things you wear. You have a lot of things with... patterns, don't you? I like ...patterns, too." he provided, helpfully tugging at the dress shirt he was currently wearing (which, coincidentally, also featured white polka dots) to illustrate his point.

Clara sighed in resigned annoyance, but couldn't completely suppress the smile creeping up at the corners of her mouth.

"I know. I vaguely remember that time you tried to fit far too many of them onto a single coat!"

"Don't remind me!" he retorted, cringing, none too amused by the way her words had lapsed into playful teasing.

"Hm. At least this means my dresses weren't completely wasted on you."

"What do your dresses have to do with _me?_ I suppose it's kind of you to offer, but I doubt that I'd fit into any of them..."

What a hopeless case, she thinks to herself, and finds him almost endearing when he isn't being annoying.

But by that time she is about to finish with the initial request he made upon arrival ("Dispose of your stilts!") and has finished to tie the laces on her own boots, and it suddenly occurs to her that he actually does have something of a point – Not about the carrion flowers, of course, but about the part with the patterns, and that insinuation that their fashion choices aren't _that_ different at the end of the day.

It struck her, quite bluntly, that their footwear matched.

He couldn't possibly have chosen those boots to impress her, couldn't he?

(And the rings, too?)

That would be far too ridiculous, with everything surrounding that moment.

No argument there.

Completely and utterly impossible.)

What she didn't consider was that, maybe, his version of 'stunned' or 'flattered' was not subtle at all, but in fact, hilariously blatant.

("Why are you talking like an idiot?!")

His unique brand of adoration takes a little getting used to.

But on the other hand, he's a bit confounded by her, too, so they're even, in a way. He comes in from the perspective of a researcher studying a bizarre thing, but how it really is and not how it's commonly pictured, not "measuring the marigolds" as much as understatedly passionate if not slightly obsessed with the details in their field of expertise, possessed by a need to know more, with the clinical, skeptical approach merely being a filter to separate the true insights from the bogus and build a bridge to the truth despite the limitations of perception, and even the confounding or imperfect things become things to know, cards to play or facts to investigate.

So there's _still_ some of that reverent focus on her alone, if not in the same way that she wants - and there might even be a little bit of the way she wants in there, with how he almost seemed taken aback there in the doorway.

 _Some_ of their signals, transmissions and communications, of their waltzes, dialogues and duets, are going past each other to an extent here, but there's a critical mass of commonalities that ultimately serves as the glue – And it's not like he never finds himself wondering wether she noticed that he visibly put some effort in combing his hair that day, if it is, for example, styled in a bit of a modern-ish peak, or how he's obviously trying to impress her with the list of potential destinations he keeps rambling about...

But, bottom line: If Clara hadn't ceased with the posing here and there, it wasn't because she had yet to realize that it was futile, or really wishes it weren't; It's more that she's not willing to be out-peacock-ed, or feels a need to respond, because, if there's a conversation on the subject of being awesome, shell always have some personal experience to contribute.

At some point in the undefined, recent past, these exchanges had long ceased to be something that was a holdover from the olden days, and become something very particular to the combination of their current selves. Sure, he was showy before, in fact, after that encounter involving three of him at once, she felt quite confident stating that he _always_ was, to varying degrees – He intrigued her from the beginning, too, so that's not a new thing, either, but it was more pronounced, more at the forefront right now, with his current self, because he would openly challenge her, annoy her back, even try to catch her off-guard or just get her impressed in a more direct, deliberate, head-on sort of way, there's a bit of a petulant brat defying his babysitter for the heck of it, or goading the more sensible playmate into pulling a crazy stunt with him (in part because he wouldn't dare to do it alone, wants to do it together, or watch her as she does it – she knows that all these are subtly different things. ) but there's also the man who's not hiding his experience, or even _flaunting_ it, and daring/trusting her to keep up

So even if he's difficult and pisses her off, she can't just let him be because all of him, even the difficult-ness, is a challenge she doesn't wanna back off from (and that might just go both ways) and it's not so often that someone like Clara meets someone she'd consider a 'worthy opponent'.

(On the other hand, she can't help but consider that, from a certain point of view, someone might find a bit of an undertone or subtext in their exchanges, something like this being their particular, individual version of the stereotypical couple having the 'how much longer will you need to get ready'/'does that dress make me look fat' conversation, or arguing about potential destinations before the designated date night, except it's a great deal more interesting, because _they_ are more interesting, and, non-standard in many ways, and wouldn't really want it any other way, deep down.)


	12. Transmissions (III)

Not everything has changed, though.

The first time she hears him call her 'boss' with that gruffer, deeper voice of his, it comes so naturally that the nostalgic little moment where she smiled to herself at the thought didn't come until well after she'd walked out of the TARDIS doors for that particular day, and was long since back at her desk, reading through some eighth grader's essay.

There had been no hesitation, no pause, no sense of a boundary that required active, intentional crossing, as if he were, however tactlessly, taking someone else's property – Instead, it had felt quite right, and not in a way that needed clarification or attention drawn to it.

These days, she was more likely to get some mocking little 'Ma'am' or 'teach' out of him than those possessive pronouns or more illustrious epithets, but those hadn't vanished, either – in a way, these little taunts suited him, as he presented himself now, or _he_ suited _them,_ like he was made to fill his current spot, and possibly, to exasperate her – Given their recent exploits as sharply-dressed merry thieves, she felt reminded of a fantasy she had once entertained after one too many action movies, a pajama-clad teenager observing herself in the mirror, holding speeches before it or just walking around the room with an attitude, and pretending to herself that she was some sort of influential mafia boss – Not that she would have been that keen on the necessary steps 'having people assassinated' or 'extorting their livelihoods from them' , but as long as it took place safely within the realm of fantasy, what struck her fancy was the thought of seeing people flinch an shrink back when she entered the room, of smiling a thin, poison-like smile as everyone stumbled over their own feet to endear themselves to her, the privilege to point at people, swiftly provide them with orders and punctuate her statements with thinly-veiled promises to 'collect their fucking heads' – in a way, it was like being a princess, only with less frills and more action scenes.

And while the previous version of him might just have been able to pass for what would probably have been the most bumbling Prince Charming ever with sufficient application of effort, his current self seemed more at home in the former scenario, with his crooked smirks and acerbic wit, she could easily imagine him in the role of her mafia princess self's most trusted hitman, aloof and professional, yet distinctly dedicated to his unlikely codex of honor, his cause, and her – except, knowing him, his more distinguished exterior would only amount to her being snapped out of her dreams at the most unexpected moment, by whatever logic might dictate when he would chose to release one of his more ridiculous statements from his mouth.

Which, she supposed, would have made the scenario fit right in with some their previous under-cover antics that had ever so often ended looking like something out of any selection of ridiculous movies (and, depending on the genre, his newfound asshole credentials even added a little atmospheric touch here and there), he and her, running around the universe in fancy dress.

In the end, he was always the one with the nicknames, the one with the _pseudonyms_ ; Not to be outdone, she was making a steady effort to retaliate where she could, which occasionally resulted in 'John Smith' crashing the occasional party (and 'party' meant strictly 'megalomaniac scheme' here) alongside a certain 'Oswin Montague' or 'Clara Smith', or in her teasingly concocting infrequently used counterparts of her own to the various appellations he'd bestowed upon her.

( _My_ Doctor, you clever boy, you ridiculous stick-insect, you're absolutely _impossible_!)

One thing she hadn't expected to see again was his way of turning a full 270 degrees when a mere 90 would have sufficed, but there it was – it took her a while t notice even with his last incarnation because of how damn natural he made it look every time, it was quite apparent that this was just how he did it and no the result of any deliberate effort, he didn't have to think twice about it, not even in the heat of battle did it cease to mesh seamlessly with the overall flow of his moments, so she might not have thought much about it, either, had she not been trying to work out what had lead him to her doorstep at the time. It wasn't confined to moments when you'd _expect_ him to be doing something you might want to pay attention to, in fact, she knew from personal experience that he'd be hard-pressed to do 'normal' if he even _wanted_ to, not that he was ever all too concerned with this whole not-looking-like-a-complete-lunatic part – and if anything, all that had gotten _worse_ these days, so it was, perhaps, no surprise that his policy in regards to turning around hadn't significantly decreased in... uniqueness. At most she might expect him to do his spinning in a somewhat different, but equally weird fashion, but there were only so many variations on turning around.

At that point, she was beginning to consider that perhaps, the things he kept wanting to say and express to her hadn't changed all that much, and it was only _how_ he said them that had changed, and in some cases, not even that.

Some things, she might have stopped noticing, others she might have overlooked because she got distracted by something else, while others had become so much clearer when given a different backdrop to contrast against, or circumstances that forced her to strip them them back or distill them down to the heart(s) of the matter, and somewhere along the way, some of the tried and true familiarity of the last three years turned out to have remained just where she'd left it, if she'd only muster the trust to rely on it to be there, in ways that allowed her to look at their entanglement as a whole, as individual chapters in a larger story – Three long weeks passed after that first, tentative approach on the streets of Glasgow, and she'd spent them with preciously little clues as to what she was supposed to feel or how things could be expected to continue from now, and in the end, he only sensible option she had left to her was to carry on with her life, at least the other parts of it, the ones that didn't _necessarily_ involve him, the ones that, at that time, seemed like they might come to be all of its parts, given how fragile and uneasy the ground they were treading on had seemed to them, so even when he arrived, he didn't bring much relief, only more turmoil, and that was without even featuring in the terrible place he'd brought her to, physically and mentally. She did wind up feeling proper moral repulsion at some point – but in the world full of stubborn ignoramuses insisting on their point without ever considering that they _might_ be wrong, he stopped, he listened, he considered, even appreciated her input, in quite astounding contrast tactlessly haughty act before, and still, with no real turn or disparity in his overall demeanor, one might even get the impression that he was trying to get her approval at some points, and when everything was over, she found him closer to hanging over the console than he was to sitting by it, his hair still disheveled and sticky with biological goop, his face pulled in folds where he'd deposited it on his knuckles, the mental, emotional and physical exhaustion from the incident (and whatever he might have gotten up to before that on his long quest for coffee) evident on his features, something about the familiarity of the situation had struck her, and it was then, suddenly, as she was about to leave through the TARDIS doors, that she knew how to answer him –

It was always something he used to do, stand by the console, his smile a mix of fondness, a varying undercurrent of melancholy and sometimes well-deserved elation if it had been that kind of day, and watch her as she walks away to the doors, back to her own world, her own daily affairs and preoccupations. His world was large and wide, so she'd spent some of their earlier days wondering what he could even want with her, but she'd come to see that it was also a lonely and empty world sometimes, so he was both glad and reluctant to welcome her inside, and similarly bittersweet in the hour of letting her go – He'd loved her _because_ of her freedom, because she had her own world in which he could admire her, from which she could always bring new mysteries to mesmerize him, so as much as he liked their times together, he would never dream of daring to restrict her, and sometimes, not always, he'd counter her casual complaints or recollections of the various going-ons that filled the rest of her days with none-too-humble tales of his own numerous undertakings, and sometimes he might have been optimistic enough to believe that, little by little, he might just learn to look after himself at at long last, at his ripe old age in the quadruple digits, as long as he had a few places he could always return to or people to count on, another example being his friends at Paternoster row, or what Amelia and her family used to be, and nowadays, of course, Clara.

And while they both knew that this, too, could never last forever, it certainly wasn't over _yet,_ and whether he found her waiting to greet him, or raising her brow at his belated and unannounced appearances in the various storage rooms of Coal Hill School, it seemed like their encounters could still wind up ending like they had so many times before – With him standing by the console, watching her walk away and possibly pause to exchange a few words by the TARDIS doors, and that was probably when she really, fully felt like she had him 'back', and allowed herself to feel the relief over how much she'd missed him those last three weeks, the few days she'd spent on her own at Madame Vashtra's mansion while he was... presumably shopping for bookshelves or something, and this whole bizarre situation that had hit her on one of the more miserable Christmases she'd been subjected to, after they'd met up for what started out like any of their ordinary adventures.

It wouldn't be the last time he continued that particular tradition, either, the more she thought about it, the surer she felt that there hadn't even been the slightest decrease in the way he would watch her walk away, and the more she found herself questioning how much of the longing she sometimes thought to see in his eyes was the product of her own hopeful interpretations – She knew that it must have been there at _some_ point –

And there was no better indication than the way he had always treated her hands with what was best described as worship, held them affectionately, handled them carefully with the wiry porcelain artist's fingers he's had back in the day, even kissed them affectionately with those fuller, youthful lips, in context ranging from joyous exuberance, grateful, humbled reverence to simple adoration and overall moved-ness, she could think of so many individual moments that she couldn't arrange them in an orderly line, or even name when exactly each of them had taken place over those log three years, not even when considering only the most significant, pivotal of moments (there was some vague notion about ice, snow and keys, or big friendly buttons) – There had been enough instances – too many, too regular in frequency for Clara to recall every single one – where he'd peppered them with little kisses as if he wanted to commit every nook and cranny of their sensory shape to memory, the shape, the texture, the scent of work, teacups and chalk-dust, the round smallness that diminished even further toward the tips, the tiniest, faintest scars leftover from long bygone accidents with swing sets or horse-riding classes, like he was indebted so far to not just her actions but what she was and stood for, the principles and histories that had driven her to act, and it didn't take much to convince herself that he probably felt he owed it to her to know, to learn every nook and cranny of her by heart(s), like she was a poem, like that was the least he could do –

After all, the hand was, in the words of Immanuel Kant, the visible part of the brain: The part of her body most commonly used to make her will manifest, what she used to fiddle with wires, draw on whiteboards, flip through pages, press keys or drive motorbikes. The hand would prove whether there was truth and value to a persons' words. The hand revealed where their true allegiance lay. The hand dripped with the nectar of her actions for which it was ever so often the conduit, and, for which he would search like a hummingbird, as if he longed to find some metaphysical impression or memory of a more abstract form of her presence, at the interface through which her mind interacted with the world –

She'd certainly have a hard time forgetting that scraping last gesture of gratitude on Trenzalore, before he went to face what he then expected would become his last battle.

And yet, she had to admit that she'd wondered if he even remembered, now, after all that time, after all that changed, what the discolored remains of those memories even looked like to him, even as they'd established a... working relationship, a new manner of coexisting, there was something pretty awkward about the thought of him, the new him, knowing about all that, but the more she considered it, what really bothered her was less the thought of him looking back at, or reliving those memories than it was the idea that he might not necessarily _want_ these memories, or how the fact that he had them meshed with the presence of someone else in her life these days, in the function he used to fill, although neither of them would have provoked that reality into forcing them to confront it by speaking the truth out loud and calling things by their names.

The fiction was flimsy back then, for starters, they had been a very physical couple

\- Sure, his last incarnation was (like his second one) rather exuberant, cuddly and quick to follow an impulse, and even liable to spontaneously plant a kiss onto the next available non-hostile adult, or object even, without meaning all that much by it (not unlike his eighth), but overall, she would have been deluding herself if were to pretend – as she ever so often did – that the context and constellation and words, gestures and clear communications through body language and gesturing left any room for misunderstandings, and there was no mistaking his hands all over the sensitive parts of her face and neck –

although she didn't fully realize how thoroughly she'd failed at keeping this at a manageable level that couldn't knock her off guard until that one time she didn't reach his hand in time. They might not have done everything by the book, but they had their own private _equivalents,_ and it takes two to play that game in a way that functions enough to last. Then, she thought, it had come crashing down as it was destined to do, as she should have seen it coming all along when she let herself get attached beyond what she could reliable shut off – but she had lost that game a long time ago, and there was, of course, the possibility that his thoughts had been exactly the same, and that she'd merely been handed a new set of equivalents, because, back then?

He had his reasons for being distant, with her more than with anyone before, but he probably wasn't used to it, to being the one doing the pining, or dealing with someone who would pick up on his inconsistencies and white lies, someone who'd force him to be the one pushing the boundaries; It wasn't easy to predict the outcome when there was two of them trying to monopolize the information and to decide who got to be privy to it, someone with a need to know about all the chess-pieces on the board – Especially now that she actually _had_ her own set of things to hide, or at least more than just the full extent of her regular old emotions.

But maybe it was this quality that had allowed her to read him and reply on a channel he'd actually be receptive to, that had a real chance of circumventing his barriers and defenses just as he's circumvented hers; Directly following the regeneration, she'd seen her inability to tell him her feelings earlier, her insistence on pursuing both narratives depending on which happened to be convenient right now, as a mistake waiting to come crashing down on her, but when she thought back to the past three years, she hadn't necessarily thought that way.

She didn't want to cause any complications that might destroy what they had, not when they could be enjoying themselves instead, or be preoccupied with the quest that the other represented. If they had those conversations, they might have to face their rational minds and the 1001 reasons for why this might not be the smartest step – But oh, they'd gotten smart, they'd indulged in their little, indirect games, they'd chosen to decidedly overhear things like third-party assumptions neither of them had bothered to correct, or unscheduled confessions brought about by Truth Fields or partial robotization, but that didn't mean they hadn't picked up on it, that didn't mean they weren't very consciously slipping into a state that might just allow them to have their cake and eat it, too.

And this was perhaps what had led to a few disastrous misunderstandings along the way, but without it, this connection wouldn't have been possible either, so who's to say that the drawbacks weren't worth the benefits, the cost worth the merchandise, or that they weren't something that they, as an unit that had accomplished the most titanic of deeds, could learn to work around?

In dark retrospect, there was no doubt that they had both been willing participants.

And while she might still not be ready to accept and acknowledge that, they still were.

After all, there was no particular reason why the deciphering of his person had to be up to _her_ specifically, duty might have kept her there at the beginning, but moths had passed and she'd still end up leaping onto his moody little snog-box when he decided to materialize it in her vicinity at however inopportune moments, and it was making her think that maybe, their problem was not so much what they _didn't_ understand about each other, but that they understood just about _enough_ , that they were very much speaking the same language more often than not, a particular, obscure dialect that no one else seemed to understand.

It was tantalizing, in a way, that she never knew enough for her interest to wane, or to perceive him as being without secrets, but still enough to keep her at it, keep them circling each other for more. It could be so much _easier_ if she simply had no clue, if they were so different that she could reasonably give up any quests for common ground, and let him go, or at least accept that a bridge could only be built to a certain extent, and then stuff him in a neat compartment of her life.

That would be easy, but he was most definitely settling for 'difficult' these days, so there was no such luck for her.

And now, the complication they'd tried to stave off had come about by their own hands, through their efforts to avoid it. Each in their own ways, they had tried to make a point to extricate themselves, but old habits die hard, and this thing he'd said wasn't her fault? It didn't take long until they were at it again.

They never really stopped, at least not for long – Let there be no confusion: As of now, she had yet to ascertain whether his scent had changed as much as his face, she had not had all that many opportunities to stay sufficiently close for longer than a few brief, awkward moment – at the very least, she suspected, there should be an additional dusting of chalk –

(She spent the first few weeks at her current workplace trying to figure out techniques to keep the insidious white dust from staining all her clothing. )

But did that mean that any and all overlapping of their physical borders had all but ceased, or had what they once shared merely been stripped back to a... more minimalistic aesthetic, as if this were the work of some ambitious artist trying to turn his story on its head to try and see what would remain of it? In the absence of his once steady, solid presence around her, she felt all the more aware of his attention to her hands, how he would hold them while leading her over thresholds, out of hatches, into ballrooms, or, when they didn't have quite as much time on those hands, he could grab then in a combination of a manner and a specific moment that eliminated the need for any and all further words.

Eventually, she even picked up on a peculiarity particular to this version of him:When the relative speed of the circumstances allowed it, he'd do this thing where he'd run his thumb over the back of her hand – a most minimal caress, and yet, enough to speak volumes of fondness and adoration, or even suggest that he might well be able to savor such things if presented to them in more manageable doses – and when she thought of it, it didn't make sense, anyway, that his careful treatment of her hands would end with his bow-tie incarnation, given that it predated him – She remembered a particular detail from the incident at the national gallery, an unbidden giggle she did not quite succeed at suppressing when his tall, suit-wearing younger self left her with a gentlemanly hand kiss before his departure, the funny thing being that this would have been one of their earliest 'proper' meetings, and that he _still_ opted for that particular gesture – he wouldn't even remember that incident until much later, so he couldn't have deliberately reused it later. Instead, it seemed like the brief observations of his older self had been enough for him to tell that she was gonna be the 'boss' in the future – there was indeed something 'submissive' about the gesture, something that communicated deference and a promise of devotion, but also with a layer of 'my power is yours to command', it was something you'd expect from a knight pronouncing his loyalty to the lady of the castle – of course, back in these days, he was still trying far too hard to be the hero everyone expected him to be, and the proof that he wasn't burst forth in volcanic bursts.

He'd eventually given up, came to consider himself a monster, and spent much time trying to distract himself from that fact, trying to downplay it or forget altogether, if only for a while, and then he'd found himself at her doorstep, getting caught in a spontaneous spring shower without an umbrella because what he'd been preparing for was endless winter, and to date, he still didn't quite know what to do with that, or even what do to about his unexpected lack of deadness following the siege of Trenzalore – A hostile world could be kept away by means of a wall, the moment of resignation meant that you could, at least, stop fighting, but hope could be scary, the once clear waters could turn murky and muddied once stirred again.

In part, she was merely getting to see the brooding that would previously have taken place beyond her reach, once those doors closed, the chilling suspicions that had, more than once, come quite close to making her blood run cold.

* * *

The outlines of the inevitable were easier to make out when she could easily make out his thoughts and truths better than he knew himself, or at least thought she did, but it was easier to forget when she found him inaccessible and cold, and more like one of those big, immovable powers in the world that one ought to be incensed against, something from faraway cities, glass domes, crystal spires and towers of ivory -

He'd turn around in the most unexpected of moments, and do something he'd never have done before: Instead of keeping it all to himself, instead of putting up a makeshift facade of "okay", he'd turn to her and tell her, in no uncertain terms, that she'd upset her.

Perhaps this was something else he now trusted her to handle, perhaps that was the common base that could be found in even the most disparate things.

Perhaps he'd trusted her to know better, or perhaps it was merely too late for him to draw back but that's the obvious thing you can no longer avoid once you open up to each other, a natural consequence of the absence of the barriers and secrets they'd torn down one by one.

He could have appealed to the past, the things they shared or the things they hadn't, but instead, he let her see in full, his disappointment, his despair, his disillusioned attempts to remind himself that she was physically incapable of having known him as long as he had known her, and couldn't fathom the bitter taste of getting so cool a reception after finding her again after a long, long time that had left her untouched; He could have kept quiet and told himself that he had no right to be upset, not when it was usually him who walked through the chapters of people's lives without bearing the marks of a single day, but she'd wanted him to give his troubles unto her, and he'd respected that, for better or for worse.

He expected more, he'd actually allowed himself to expect, and could only chide himself so much for it.

"I am right here!"

"You haven't explained him to me!"

"I thought that's what you wanted."

And with what right, she wonders, does he say that? Did she not do exactly as she asked? - He replies something similar back to her when she requests to know why she was left alone with that terrible burden on the pock-marked satellite of her fragile little world.

Can they not reach a however fragile basis of basic understanding even if they think they're working toward each other's best, is there no way they cannot coexist without cutting each other to pieces?

In these days, she learns, unexpectedly, that she's capable of enjoying the act of spiting him, that, if he's going to pull an "It's not me it's you" thing on her, if he's going to be a coward and reveal his feelings only when he'd decided, without consulting her, to close that door forever, and have the nerve to tell her to move on, she just _might,_ and that if he wanted no part in her life, he had no business being upset over her life choices.

_("Because I love him!")_

She learns that she's capable to tell a moment that should have belonged to someone else, words that should have been told properly, and just _use_ it to spite someone else; She didn't go into this meaning to deceive, but in the end, she did.

She learns that the skillfully crafted words she uses to leverage and convince, always with good intentions, the vowels and consonants she made her life's trade, can also be used to cut like knives, slice like blades and stab like rapiers, she learns that when she's backed into a corner, her claws long to _scratch and tear._

_("Get back in your lonely bloody TARDIS and don't come back!")_

She also learns, unexpectedly, that for someone who says such horrible things all the time, he has a fairly thin skin, and his own feelings bruise quite easily. It is perhaps the one realization that begins to dawn on her the earliest, and takes the longest to complete – He cries easily. Before, it took quite a bit of punishment for the dark pools of his inner waters to reach the surface, but now, much of the cruft has been worn down by time, or washed away by her, and it does not take very much to reduce him to tears. The sight of him outright bawling is not one anyone is ever very likely to see, but him just tearing up, eyes sparkling with wetness?

That wasn't that much of a rarity, and it rarely less rare than in the vicinity of _her._

She may have been too disbelieving to see it, too angry to care, or too burdened for him not to conceal it, but when she put the clues together, she couldn't evade the feeling that this had always been happening all around her, and she'd merely failed to notice before – And maybe that humbled stupefaction was the closest she'd get to glimpsing how her existence must appear to him.

The thing that really throws her off balance, what exasperates her the most, is that she was absolutely not thinking of it in those moments, that it didn't occur to her that she, as the one he allowed to hold his secrets would also have the power to actually hurt him, that her words could cut that deep – in the instants before, she'd felt like she could barely even reach, even been beginning to doubt whether they existed on the same planes of being at all, him and her, but there he was, if not suddenly broken, then visibly cracked, and no matter how much he frustrated her, how much she might want to smash in his smug visage, she still couldn't stand to see him in pain, she could stand it no more than she could before any of this fiasco, even if the cause of that hardship was herself and her will to cause it, even if she'd deemed it well-deserved, and he looked ever so pained, so visibly miserable when he thought she might never want to see him again, and she wanted to curse him for making it so hard on her to take what ought have been the reasonable path.

But there was also always that treacherous part of her that delighted in the power, over the future, over the moon which seemed to make an ever so perfect metaphor for their fractured little bond – a her that secretly rejoiced in the knowledge, the potential, in what was revealed to be shining through from behind fault lines and cracks, the life beneath the shell of the egg: To know that she had such power over him, that he put such weight onto her words, that she could make him unravel before her with but a flick of a wrist.

But she had been scared of that power, that responsibility, the fear of getting it wrong, the truth of her own being, that she had drawn back, backpedaled, played it safe, from what was not breaking apart but transforming, awakening with an intensity that might just force her to realize that her heart was beyond her ability to control, that the burn of her own feelings could overwhelm her, and that she might not know where this path led.


	13. Transmissions (IV)

_Selkie unzips her skin_

_finally determined_

_through a window in the dark_

_there he sits all alone_

_I've been waiting on the love of my life to find_

_he's been waiting on his Selkie to come back_

_he said "I know these shores are not like yours_

_but will you make your home in my arms?"_

_Selkie battled tide and wave_

_just to gaze upon his face_

_hiding behind rocks to learn_

_if he found a new love_

_Loralie sings the song for Lovers_

_who were torn apart then left broken hearted_

_Loralie hears the cry of Lovers_

_who the Sea of Fate has separated_

_Selkie puts her hand in his_

_he knows the gift she gives_

_there inside his cabinet_

_folded safe her seal skin_

_I've been waiting on the love of my life to find_

_he's been waiting on his Selkie to come back_

_he said "I know these shores are not like yours_

_but will you make your home in my arms?"_

_Tori Amos, 'Selkie'_

* * *

("Why do you keep rambling about your dishwasher, is it faulty?"

"For once, yes, it actually is.")

Case in point, he once got _very_ territorial when he briefly assumed that she'd let _Danny_ fix some plumbing-related problem when, in fact, she'd solved it herself. It took her a surprising amount of time to draw the connection that the skills she'd acquired when it came to analyzing and working with futuristic devices might also be applied to the very mundane machines in her own flat, and that there was no reason for them to mystify her anymore. The actual results were... discouragingly mixed, not a dismal failure, yet somewhat underwhelming, she supposed they could have been refined with practice, but once she'd seen that he was actually a lot more invested in playing her personal maintenance man, and actually seemed to like himself in that role despite his grumbling, she'd taken pleasure in leaving all the broken electronics to him and his sonic screwdriver – after all, as she'd once remarked with much more of a wise-cracking tone than she had the right to use, given the subject matter, it was a computer problem that had brought them together in the first place.

She had not been able to determine whether his ensuing sigh had been of the annoyed or nostalgic sort.

At least, he was a lot less likely to go overboard and leave her having to explain why her cupboards were bigger on the inside than his adorably overzealous previous incarnation, but she still tried to avoid leaving him in her apartment for too long, lest she find her fridge disassembled or her ceiling miraculously covered in lopsided mathematical formulas and heaps of disorderly Gallifreyan script, both of which had actually happened.

Thus, the circumstances under which he'd acquired a key to her flat had been significantly less of an emotional bonding moment than one might imagine, and mostly motivated by a vague hope that he might cause his destruction somewhere else.

Sure, he could as well have taken the very spaceship he arrived with and parked it outside, or just skipped ahead half an hour and check again if she had come home yet, but she'd long given up on expecting him to take the obvious route, and a part of her actually liked the idea of him loitering at her apartment and making himself at home there, like he was her honorary flatmate of sorts.

He'd started to leave some of _his_ things at her place, too, although this had unfortunately prompted a serious discussion about the chalk dust everywhere.

Still.

From what she'd gathered, most of his previous playmates had moved onto the TARDIS full-time, leaving behind their places of origin, and thus lived in close quarters with him purely for convenience's sake at first. Maybe they simply didn't have anything worthwhile keeping them wherever they had lived.

But Clara, who already had a relatively fulfilled life and a job she very much enjoyed, had pretty much treated him like any other suitor, any other potential friend, and decided he'd have to show up when her schedule allowed it.

Usually, this sort of 'entanglements' were something that just happened to him, either unexpectedly, or somewhere along the way, but she'd made him court her properly, and it was, perhaps, the first time in his life, or at least the first time since leaving Gallifrey, that he'd really had to do that, and gone out of his way to bring it about, so when their spheres of living actually started to overlap, little by little, it seemed more _meaningful_ in a way, because it had once been optional and was now deliberately chosen.

He'd gotten to observe her in her native habitat, and by now, he'd more or less become acquainted with her charges, her friends, her students, family and co-workers, much like she'd met his superiors at UNIT or his little group of friends at Paternoster Row, and just like she'd gotten to play a part in some important events in his life, he had, by now, become an almost permanent accessory to her flat and workplace.

In the end, she'd ended up drawing him into her world as much as he'd drawn her into his.

* * *

Another thing that tended to make her very aware of the difference was his piloting.

Beyond the initial crash landing, she'd seen very little of his previous, frivolously haphazard approach – When he really wanted to, his hands would glide over the keys and levers like wind, his fingers expertly finding the correct keys without even needing to look at them, whirring around the console or pulling over the screen with next to no unnecessary motions, his movements abrupt, blunt, and to-the-point.

She knew that there was a time when he could barely get this ship to land at a specific destination, but seeing him like this forced her to realize how many long, long years had passed since then. There were still times where he didn't wind up quite where he wanted to go, or left her waiting for a few weeks, but those were better attributed to his general scatterbrainedness than his piloting skills in particular – he wasn't even out of practice, in any sense of the word that she would have recognized – once the aftereffects from the regeneration had fully worn off, it became quite apparent that working the controls of this ship had become second nature to him, that it was so deeply engrained that it was just a matter of picking up right where he left off, except that he didn't feel like reviving any of those long faded reckless driving habits.

He was long past childishly pretending that the stabilizers didn't exist, if he judged that he's need the, he used them, and if not, he didn't, although he _was_ experienced enough to manage without them more often than not.

He still didn't do this by the book, and he never would, but by now, this had peaked in the ability to effortlessly pilot this vessel without the safeties on, working out all of its specific little knacks, tendencies, tricks of the model that one could only learn by using it, and eventually, the skill to pull off stunts and tricks that the engineers and designers of the Type-40 had never intended nor though possible.

Through the lens of understanding, the quick and sparse motions of his hands became akin to the caress of a lover after years and years of sharing a marriage bed with his bride, long after patience, dedication and faithfulness had inducted into every last secret of her body, and taught him exactly where and how to direct his touch, like a masterful musician at work on his instrument of choice.

The difference was starling, not just by itself, but because of what it implied in retrospect, about the amount deliberate sloppiness he must have applied, the kind of hoops he must have jumped through to make the piloting experience every bit as 'fun' as it had been in the early days, and of course, the downright suicidal levels of gross, self-hating negligence she must have been exposed to each time she agreed to become a passenger on this craft.

The present state, however, was just as understatedly frightening as the previous one.

Of all sudden, she found herself forced to recognize the full implications of something she'd only known as a theoretical statement before – That she was in the presence of the single most experienced time traveler in the universe, a man who'd gone further than anyone else, who'd had literally ages to hone his already superhuman instincts to navigate even the most extraordinary of circumstances, and he'd been bonded to this particular ship for so long, spent so much time tinkering and improving it, that he'd probably come closer to using it at its full potential than anyone before him, including those who'd moved on to their newer, fancier models, none of which would ever see as much action as this particular craft.

And by now, he was no longer bothering to sugarcoat it, no longer pretending to be anything else, not going out of his way to be anything at all, neither reasonable nor over-the-top whacky, merely letting his true merit shine through. When he acted childish, it was never to conceal anything but because he _felt_ like being childish in that particular moment, and when he didn't, there was this sheer _monster_ , this _abyss_ to be seen, the most 'tangible' thought of his perhaps, ironically, being that he might just deserve to be seen just like this, and that he should throw away whatever useless pride ever drove him to hope for anything else.

These days, she finds herself picking up some rudimentary time-machine piloting skills of her own, and she might very much need them, because his mastery of the _intended_ functions of this time capsule merely turned his irrevocable madness toward a different outlet.

He was, by now, in the position to be more than just a skilled practitioner, and personally work to further advance the science of time travel beyond the achievements of his ancestors.

The realization that he _could,_ and that he was in a pretty unique position in terms of how to approach the remaining big questions of the field – because there were _always_ remaining big questions in _any_ field – might have come to him at any point between the feat he'd accomplished at Gallifrey (with a little help from himself, himself and Clara) and mere minutes before he'd thought of whatever preposterous idea he'd concocted, and shown up in her vicinity at some inopportune moment, his eyes taken over by a strange light.

Not all of the serial experiments turned out quite as much of a breakneck enterprise, or as imbued with more primal motivations as the one that led to their trip to the end of the universe, but 'serial experiments' was certainly the word for it. She saw him working a lot more deliberately and methodically than ever before, although that 'methodical' should never be misunderstood as 'cautious' or 'reasonable' – He might have occasionally pursued a little enlightenment on the side before, and merely obscured it with a variety of obfuscating window-dressing, but his decidedly more systematic approach makes itself felt, yet merely assures that his madness gets channeled down the most efficient paths, for the best possible results or possibly maximum crazy; And since she had the dubious honor of being the muse that had inspired him to go further than anyone had even gone before in yet another way in a list of many others, she was the only... lab assistant? He would be satisfied with.

She supposed that there was some high opinion implied in that, in the act of him interrupting whatever he'd been doing out there in the vast blackness and coming all the way to Earth when he wasn't confident that he could handle something alone, some appreciation for her skills, wisdom and company, but that was a distant, formlessly abstract thought in the moments she'd actually spend having to deal with him – Once he'd worked himself into a frenzy about a particular question or theory to pursue, it would take some drastic measures to snap him out of it, and while she was sure enough that she could strongarm him into desisting if it came down it, she wanted to save up shots of that magnitude lest they be subject to diminishing returns – She wanted to be sure that he would know that she was serious when she was serious, let there be no confusion.

She'd known from her time with his previous incarnation that he had a certain inclination, even a need to keep himself busy, that he tended to get carries away while he was working and might just wind up rearranging the contents of her garage into an eccentric-looking vehicle when he'd only meant to mow her lawn.

He used to be the type of person who could never stop moving; and a general rule, he'd default to reading or tinkering with the console if there was nothing else to do. Those last two things still held true, but the childish, boundless energy seemed to have been entirely replaced by a driven restlessness, that may or may not have been a colder, dryer manifestation of some shared, underlying quality, but the resulting visual was a very different one from his previous brand of youthful and endearing.

When his mind could actually be persuaded to focus on something, he could spend days on end working like a man possessed, working on his ship's various machinery, bent over his workbench or amidst piles of scrolls and writings, comparing data, making preparations, rewiring the sensor arrays, pounding a few coordinates into the central console before storming out the doors without as much as a basic environment scan to check this and that, not too rarely visiting very different times and places in short succession and dispensing with anything resembling rest; In the 'best' case, he'd spend some of that time chewing various sugary snacks without much of a nutritional value, but when he was particularly immersed in what he was doing, even _that_ basic a concern was liable to completely vanish from his mind – Not all of his investigations were strictly _about_ time travel itself as much as they were using some of his newer methods to answer questions from diverse fields of study, questions that, when she was lucky enough to have heard of the subject matter at some point in her life, struck her as either mindbogglingly obvious things or verging on joke material, but as far as this world's proven propensity for patent ridiculousness was concerned.

When his exploits _did_ veer into the territory of fundamental research, what knowledge the sum of her previous experiences had allowed her to amass led her to piece together a suspicion that some of it might just be meant to explore possibilities that he hoped might eventually crystallize into viable methods to retrieve his lost planet from wherever it had gotten to, and the way the console room invariably tended to transform into even _more_ of a mess of chalk dust, tools and reference materials of when he thought he might have a lead on any such thing seemed to confirm those suspicions.

Among other things, he had been experimenting with inputting his thoughts directly into the ship's navigation matrix without any further man-machine interfaces in between, which seemed to oddly echo her own struggles more and more the longer she thought about it. Those long days had a tendency to leave her acutely aware that, when she chose to speak to him, what actually happened was that some part of her brain would try to wrap her intentions into words, and then order her mouth to produce some equivalent in sound, in the manner of a signal being encoded before it could be safely transmitted. Sound was not even the only available medium, the same meaning could be expressed with many different, more or less accurate strings of words, that did not even need to become sound at all. It was, for example, possible to transport those same words through written symbols or sigh language, and on the level of the intentions themselves, one might be able to completely dispense with the words and convey them with gestures alone. Upon closer inspection, even the words themselves were just another class of symbols that might be substituted by letters of a different alphabet, or an equivalent in a whole different language – it would then fall to the facilities in _his_ head, both software as well as hardware, to identify the communications, divide them into words, and infer her intentions.

More than that, he was not necessarily operating on the same system architecture as her and might store or process the same input somewhat differently –

So basically, attempting to get him to listen to her led more or less to the same process that took place when he entered a set of coordinates into the keyboards of the console. To lower the numbers of the steps in-between was to allow less opportunities for nuances of meaning to get lost or muddled in translation, and thus, to increase the chances of reaching an understanding – and this, not even quite as metaphorically as one might think, given that this ship was more or less sentient, and, as Clara had the personal misfortune of of finding out, quite temperamental at times.

She knew from one of their run-ins with UNIT that he'd been a long-time fan on antique vehicles, even of the non-alive variety, but she'd been forced to realize that this went a bit further than the usual case of a boy talking to his car by the time she found _herself_ pleading with the moody time-capsule in exhausted exasperation. This ship was, by its very function, a means to bend, warp and slip through the very dimensions of spacetime, and it did so by means of harnessing an entire star that had been harvested, or possibly even created to serve as its power source, eternally frozen in the moment of its collapse, but it was also a a chimeric mosaic of mechanical and biological parts and slightly telepathic, to, boot, probably because it _had_ to be for some of its various functions like the ever so practical translation matrix. 'She' – this being the term the Doctor used, without having ever insinuated to Clara whether it was in any way based in actual biology or a cultural convention, or merely part of his own personal affectionate treatment, like a nickname of sorts – was very much alive and had a will of her own, and not just in the sense that would also have applied to Clara's goldfish, and her coexistence with her pilot was very much based on a kind of chosen, mutual symbiosis, the ship was supposedly 'primed to his imprint' whatever that was supposed to signify – There was a level to their connection on a physical level, or at least a special mental bond, that exceeded anything you might find between a boy and his favorite car, pet or a named weapon in a way that existed completely outside of Clara's personal life experience.

The closest she had to 'symbionts' coexisting with her were the bacteria in her gut, but unlike them, this ship was complex enough that it could be considered to have self-awareness and personality.

But there were still aspects to this that she could understand without having to be a Time Lord for it, in part because, as mentioned before, the Doctor and his TARDIS were an unusually close pair of spaceship and pilot, and her nature as a person just added to it – He had almost exclusively used this ship for many, many years and eschewed newer models that might have been more reliable, but would have required him to get used to their systems and relinquish some of the mastery he'd achieved with his own imperfect, but familiar craft; Already a museum piece when he got hold of her, this particular TARDIS' long existence had let to quirks and malfunctions accumulating, but he'd also continually made his own repairs, adjustments and modifications and since she was alive, one might assume that she'd gained and profited from as much as her 'thief'. But there was also a factor of their affinity as bonded creatures and their relationship as two 'people', by the widest definition. They got along well, they matched in their natures, in their combination, and he probably gave more importance to that than his dispassionate, haughty brethren who just saw their advanced, awesome creations as machinery to be used. The two of them were an unique entity unto themselves, one that would not have been possible without the civilization of Gallifrey to bring them forth (although they would not have become what they were without their encounters with the people of Earth, either), but the things they had done, the things they had seen, been involved with and lived throughout had made them a different sort of entity, with the TARDIS perhaps developing and cultivating her sentience further than many of her sisters, and him becoming widely feared as far more than just another Time Lord – but on the other hand, they habitually landed in the middle of Clara's living room, and she knew better than anyone else than anyone else that they were sometimes better described as a catty, grumpy cow and a ridiculous, embarrassing man-child, respectively. That, however, also made its own kind of sense – since they both had stubborn personalities, they might not always agree on where to go, but that still mean they were 'similar' and Clara heard him implying that he ultimately valued his particular ship _exactly_ because he might occasionally be surprised by where he wound up, the reckless man loving the thrill and risk with antique, unreliable technology and its do-it-yourself potential coexisting seamlessly with an adventurer's fondness for a similarly brave and curious partner whom they could still rely on in a pinch, but still contributed cool ideas of her own.

In a way, it wasn't that different from Clara's own turbulent relationship with the troublesome man, in that the configuration of their flesh might have been very different, but the affinity in their minds and spirits vastly outweighed the differences in their perspectives or the occasional clashes that were ultimately necessary results of their similar natures... except that given his time machine's status as an antique even by Time Lord standards, he'd be the younger partner in that particular setup, so there's that.

Even as one of the few human long-term passengers that _hadn't_ made the TARDIS her primary residence, Clara might have been more aware of the dynamic between the two than the average member of their fellowship, just from the sheer amount of mischief, planning and even dark humor involved in the various pranks she had been subjected to, and the insidious ways their cautious execution had ensured that everything but the cutest trivialities never took place within earshot of both their favorite idiot.

After Clara had thoroughly proven that she had his best interest at heart (or at least, that he was unlikely to give up on his fascination with her anytime soon) and a few... let's say, 'insightful bonding experiences', the two of them seemed to have reached a bit of a truce; While the cheeky blue time machine would still send the occasional prank her way (just enough to keep her on her toes), she'd also been granted access to rare privileges like the ability to open the doors with a snip of her fingers, at least whenever the TARDIS happened to find it funny.

Later, he had theorized that it was something about her unique existence that had led the ship to regard her as an anomaly to be wary of before her encounter with his time stream had actually taken place, because her existence was such a small action, but held the potential to disengage a very large cascade of reaction that would branch out, scatter throughout the universe, and fold back on itself – the incident that caused all this took place on but led her to have played a part in bringing the two of them together and thus causing the events that led her there in the first place (not that Clara really remembered having played the matchmaker for the Doctor and his TARDIS; He'd told her not to force herself to remember too badly because there were some among her various deaths that would not make for very pleasant memories, including a few incidents where "the Daleks got you", but she could not help sort of wishing that she could, in part because of the possibility that she might understand him better if she remembered the few times she must have been raised under the same Sky as him; On the other hand, some part of her felt an uneasy resentment about the thought of remembering anyone other as her parents as the ones she'd first grown up with)

To her, her encounter with his time stream was an isolated incident that has once been in her future and now lay behind her, but from the TARDIS' temporary transcendent perspective, so his explanation, her being was something that extended all along their path together, following along the scar he'd left on this world, following him from beginning to end as surely as his trusty time machine did, and being perhaps the only existence that shared that status with her, so that was due to catch her attention, or so he had explained, and her presence back then, before performing that stunt, had been an intersection point with the fragile start of everything.

Clara herself still suspected that his spaceship was simply a little jealous.

So they had a complex sort of relationship, too, as much as may have been a focal point thereof – all of which made the few occasions on which she'd gotten to do the mental connecting herself all the weirder. On some level, it was just a somewhat experimental way of using a machine, for a specific purpose, and his unchecked recklessness had assured that she'd gotten her chance to try flying the machine alone without any guidance beyond her observations of seeing him go about the task day in day out, for what little these may or may not have helped. But the first time he'd been standing right behind her, his large elegant hands firmly guiding her fingers inside, so close she could feel herself lightly brush against his shirt and jacket here and there, sense his breath on her neck, distinctly perceive his presence all around, although there was still, as always, no real warmth to it, this, too, more of an utilitarian gesture than anything else, and right then, he'd been too busy whacking his brains about his various theories and considerations, and perhaps, some underlying tension from a very different source, a primal fear he'd never quite managed to shake off, to even consider that this very same gestures could have been carries out with very different goals and meanings in mind, or that the scarcity of such closeness these days would by itself, give this event a potential for significance – Their closeness, bizarrely, made her aware of all that mere motion through a distance of space could never connect, that their flesh and blood was constructed very differently between the thin barriers of their roughly comparable, but ultimately very dissimilar skin, her hand were smaller, warmer, darker, smoother than his. But there was another source from which a sense of double meaning trickled into the moment, finding their way not from superficial resemblances or very subjective base urges, but the realm of the abstract, the considerations of equivalents, metaphors and implications, layers of being; The telepathic interface consisted of a side of the console where the openings of the main panel covering it didn't reveal buttons or levers, but allowed direct access to the biological components – At first glance, she'd assumed that these threads of white material would feel rather sticky, like chewing gun pulled apart or some sort of viscous goo. Instead, they turned out to be rather like coral, superficially appearing as though they might feel soft and pliant like animal or mushroom tissue, but turning out to have a stony, mineral-like consistence like flint, porcelain or the shells of a clam, though she could feel the stirrings of activity that was not quite pulsating because it wasn't the substance itself moving as much as it was some presence flowing _within_ it, perhaps the sae energy that gave the material it's diffuse inner glow – At first, she thought that the 'tissue', if it could be classified as such, was being lit by some lamps for better access, examination and perhaps to indicate the functions of the various slots, but upon closer examination she concluded that the light was coming from inside the material itself, intensifying in brightness like the blue tint of water depending of how thick a layer or string of material was, and sure enough, she could feel the tingle of a presence or connection, the vague sensation of a tunnel opening up where the back of her mind used to end, just a little bit, so slight she'd find herself asking if it was really there and not just her imagination unless she explicitly concentrated. If there were colors, she'd associate it with pearly cream, peach or the minimal pink of certain seashells, a light, 'mineralic' presence compered to the clear direction of her own thoughts. As a human with no particular psychic talent, she may simply not have had the talents necessary to make out anything more specific, or characteristic, but that ought to be her, the being... person even, who was responsible for some of the more... 'adventurous' bathroom breaks of her lifetime. It would have been a very different, perhaps simpler story if she'd presented herself in a familiar image, that of her usual wooden blue guise perhaps, if she'd used a copy of Clara's own form like she'd done for the holographic voice interface, or shown her a metaphoric analogue like perhaps a kooky-looking grey lady in a frilly blue dress, but this was much more raw, and, admittedly, harder to make sense of. But it was a part of her, that presence, and the glowing white material she'd just inserted her fingers into, which meant that, in a more extended way, it was also a part of _him._

Perhaps, if she were able to look deep enough and listen closely enough, she might have been able to feel her way through the link to wherever he was linked to it, or seen him as reflected and perceived by a being that was even more dissimilar from her than he was, something that didn't even share a similar form, but, quite possibly, some of the passions that brought them together.

It irritated her, that she'd gotten the opportunity for this sort of direct communication, but lacked the ability to do very much with that opened canal.

Yet, even for the purpose of more pragmatic concepts, it struck her that being allowed in there, to plot the course of their journey, could very well be seen as a sign of great trust, intimacy even. There were various forms of that, many things that thinking beings could share with each other, their space, their belongings, their thoughts, the days of their lives; And she'd known that, intellectually, she'd professionally discussed the subject many times as it came up in literature, but on the other hand, she'd always expected that she would find all of these qualities in the same person. Once upon a time, she'd lost her heart to this really clever boy who liked to wear bow ties, and little by little, he'd understood her, his words and deeds touched parts of her being that no one before had ever really reached, but they'd also become a very physical couple, always touching each other in one way or another, his lips, fuller and firmer then, were always peppering her cheeks and forehead with kisses. Never did she expect her life to turn into some mockery of a philosophic thought experiment, where she had one place to offer her her refuge and closeness in strong, supportive arms, and this confounding distant person who could ignite her with little more than faint brushes of his hands and the mere sound of his voice.

It would be one thing if she'd found herself torn between two opposing desires that called to different parts or principles inside herself – that could have been arranged in a way that gave both their proper space. But deep down, she knew which one she'd prefer if it really came down to, and the searing weight of that truth pressed down on her conscience and squeezed itself into the cracks between the partitions of her little world, coalescing into more and more of a concrete wall that would have to have to be messily broken down at the cost of an ugly pile of rubble if anything should slip out of its designated spaces.

(But in here, in this compartment of her world, there were times where she just knew, when she gave no thought to anything else and any and all reasons she would have had to delude herself slipped from her mind in the heat of a moment.

Here, inside this blue box, she knew that all three of their fates were unquestioningly intertwined; In some ways, it could be said that they had all come this long, long way together, which was a cool thought she felt free to be unabashedly proud of, but also, all in all, a bit of an abstract reassurance; To the TARDIS, it might all exist at once, to him, much of it was still to come, but for her, much of it was in the past and had only a limited bearing on where her journey would continue from now on, particularly as far the more or less linear part of her existence as a schoolteacher on Earth was concerned.

Yet even now, the universe seemed to find strange new ways to lead their paths back together, as if any suggestion of their parting were equivalent to a fly's weak struggling in the sticky abode of a big fat spider whose careful of her web would only ensure that they got themselves even more entangled in the threads of her handiwork.

Every road seemed to somehow lead her back to his door, or at least, every road she was actually going to follow; even long after that initial entanglement, things kept happening, things such as the crossing of their paths at the national gallery, or her second – and for the TARDIS, the fourth – visit to a particular dusty barn not too far from the slopes of Mount Perdition.)

* * *

Perhaps it's the human mind's obsessive wish to retroactively arrange everything in a narrative that makes sense, in retrospective, she doesn't know. If things had gone another way at any step of the process, if they had since parted and never uninterested, she might now be using the same memories to convince herself that they had been talking past each other from the very beginning.

He was filthy and disoriented, and the whole place stank of rotting meat, but had he not said something beautiful, somewhere in between using their argument as a pretext for reconnaissance, or perhaps the other way around?

His very own, stark sort of beauty she had not yet learned to appreciate, but there it was, his motion as he'd leaned forward for no other reason than to grab her hand, a full-body motion betraying a particular intensity that he reserved for only her, an understated tenderness in his voice, in his eyes, a gleam of feverish desperation –

" _Honestly, I don't want you to change..."_

Back then, she'd looked at him like a boundary had been crossed, and her reaction to his attempts to lighten the conversation was much the same -

("No, don't smile. I'll smile first.")

But, and that was the main point of her belated realization, there hadn't been an immediate disconnect, not for either of them – She'd rushed to his side without a moment's hesitation when he'd first collapsed, but that was before he'd given her a voice and a definite set of mannerisms to associate with the face, a potential stranger to fill the blank space –

And this was to be his welcome, after longing to see her for so, so long.

Odysseus, returning from his journey, returning to town in disguise, returning to glimpse whether his beloved wife had found somebody new, about to find his house in ruin.

So she finds herself looking back at his words, once more, now with clarity:

" _Am I home?"_

" _If you wanna be."_

Afraid that he might leave her behind, doubtful that he would even come back for her, she wasn't sure if he wasn't looking for an excuse to be rid of her. She came to dismiss this as the irrational, nonsensical product of her _own_ uncertainty within the next ten minutes, but that still left the question of what his own experience of these minutes had been like...

He spoke of the furniture. He monopolized the blame. He struck a pose with his new outfit. Everything, anything to get her to respond, to talk to him like she always did, or even to roll her eyes is disbelief like so many times before, if that's what it came down to... but she didn't.

So, he obviously gave her the option to leave, for the same reason that he hadn't given her the option to stay when they first arrived at Christmas town – because he understood her well enough to know that she wouldn't even voice the alternative as a possibility.

He had already seen that she would infallibly put duty over her own well-being and her place in the painstakingly built frameworks of her life, and she had already been ready to give so much for him – He couldn't possibly demand any more of her, and even though he practically begged her not to, it was a matter of principle to let her know that the doors were always open for her to leave.

But even then, his words were laced with a second layer of meaning echoing close behind, something broader, less specific – Even he had not completely conceptualized just what exactly he was offering there, beyond the general suggestion of a direction, leaving her to step into what had usually been her space, to be the one to draw the specific lines and boundaries as the one with the technically busy schedule, but even without her adding any further specifiers, the rough gist was clear enough:

If she wanted to go home, she could step outside these doors;

But she might also, if she be so inclined, consider this an invitation to find her home right here –

Not in the profane, potentially selfish sense that he wanted her to merely change the location of her belongings, of restrict the facets of her life to those that took place here, but a the higher, abstract sense, the very meaning of the word "home" – a place she could always return to, somewhere she could create a space of her own, where she would always be welcome.

It was apparent in his pained, bittersweet smile that her lack of response to a statement like this would be a source of discouragement, but even if she said nothing, he was leaving the door open;

Even if she had left right there and then, he'd at least wanted her to hear, wanted to know – That if she ever needed shelter or refuge, come hell or high water, if a dark day should come, she could have turned to him much like he had turned to her in the past, and he would have shared with her all that was his, or at least as much as he could give her, of his life, of his journey, of his company.

" _Better get that, might be your boyfriend."_

And if she had understood him back then, her answer would have been different.

" _So, who was it?"_

That damned fool and his nerve to decide it all by himself, for them both.

That fool and his illusion that the final words would somehow hurt less if they came from his own mouth.

But what could she say, what high ground could she possibly have claimed?

She was guilty of exactly the same, and if any of this had been a mistake, it was time that she let him know that it was _**hers**_ as much as his.

What a bunch of _fools_ they were.

Utter, complete fools that were utterly, completely deserving of each others foolishness.

They'd broken up even though they both still loved each other, and they had parted ways even though they both wanted to stay by each others' side.

They'd separated, because it was more important to them to stay in each other's lives no matter what, than what specific role they might get to play in that life. And they'd bid each other farewell because they valued the other's happiness even more than that, so much they were willing to endure their suffering in solitude, and because of many other reasons that, to anyone else, would have looked more like a set of reasons to _begin_ a relationship than to end it –

But good people had died, tears had been shed, dreams had been shattered, inconvenient facts had become apparent, and at the end of the day, they both saw themselves justly punished, ultimately, punished by only themselves, of no help to anyone.

What a pair of hopeless cases, old, spent, silly, ridiculous, presumptuous fools!


	14. Transmissions (V)

_Maybe he and I_

_are like a pair of suns that are captured_

_eternally linked into chasing each other's spin_

_\- Tori Amos, 'Cactus Practice'._

* * *

But let the past be past.

What she came back to every day (or a close enough approximation thereof), what she chose each time she followed him through these blue doors, was him-of-the-present –

Him as she could see, hear, touch and experience him right now.

His face, his voice, his gestures, habits and movements, his big rectangular ears and his long, bizarrely cute eyelashes –

His clothes, shoes, his bookshelves, blackboards and improvised gadgets, his odd taste in socks, the occasional forgotten knickknack lying around in her apartment almost like a territorial marking.

His he borders of his region, both abstract and concrete, as it could be recognized by others, and his unknowable innermost.

Him:

His will, his power, the light in his eyes, the patterns of his veins on the back of his hands, and the insidious way he could package words and libraries of meaning in the tiniest of gestures.

The blunt, nonchalantly-sloppy, yet boldly-deliberate manner to conduct his acts and speeches that was only his own, like a rose might have its own indivisible shade of red, like what those TV ads for fancy hair dye vainly loved to promise.

Him:

Audacious, driven, acerbic, absurdly-slash-adorably absent-minded, with a brooding introspective streak and precious little sense for when to shut his mouth.

The type of person who'd try to extinguish fire with gasoline instead of water.

Him:

Irritable.

Irritating.

_Irresistible._

Downright _infuriating._

Far from always there, but always _liable_ to drop out of the sky and lead her on a merry dance, drag her along to whatever madness had possessed him this time, and along the way, they'd continue their continuous little game of tug-of-war, all too often in the form of scenarios where she tried to exert some form of dominance merely to get him to act sensible, while he would simultaneously attempt to drag her along for whatever enterprising undertaking had struck his fancy this time.

She was not particularly unsuccessful at dominating him, if you were to measure it with some tally mark list comparing wins versus losses, but he knew how to be a delicious arduous tease without ever trying, and in this game, she was never allowed to hold onto too much satisfaction for too long, just in bits and bursts to keep her stuffing coins into the metaphorical slot machine: Each time she thought she had him under her thumb, he'd turn around, subject her to a sobering reminder of his nature – ancient, petulant, unreadable, nonconformist, uncontrollable – and presumably, leave her hanging on for dear life somewhere, sometime, holding onto some railing or tube.

Sometimes he didn't mean to, he just didn't think he could bear something on his own, or didn't realize he was being sharp or or rude, and yet, on other occasions, he'd very much try to catch her off her guard, to knock her off balance to try and see what might be uncovered behind that supposedly overly-serious exterior he frequently made fun of with little semblance of restraint, or just very, very transparently trying to draw her attention.

He made her blood boil, he didn't even need to _make an effort_ to make it pound in her head, rush out of clenched fists, or stew in her loins, and there, he would stand, oblivious, or indifferent, or at very least none too concerned about the aggravation he'd cause to her and others.

He, as he was now, honestly didn't seem to give a damn what sort of things he was sprouting at the world, like there were faraway parts of him that no one could reach, or touch, or grasp to get a hang on them, and it wasn't even suited to poetical descriptions like 'shapeless like a drifting cloud', there wasn't this leak of the mythical that you'd expect in a disguised fairytale creature that would give itself away with some telltale remainder of its true form –

She could see his form just fine, but that didn't mean that she could make sense of it, and he didn't particularly care whether he made any sense, usually, he'd be busy with something else and concentrating on _that_ and wouldn't spare much patience for anyone who didn't have anything to contribute, and when he was done, he'd just pack up and never look back once that particular 'portal to the faerie world' was closed and ceased to intersects with the realm of his solitary wanderings, devil-may-care.

She could never be like this, and it's not like she wanted to – there was _good reason_ to mind the concerns of common sense and sanity (within reason... or lack thereof), and since he wouldn't, that task would fall to her, when he didn't succeed at dragging her into the madness instead, dragging her by that same concern, some obligation to mitigate the madness and keep him in one piece, or perhaps sometimes even some treacherous side of her that secretly admired the fearlessness she wouldn't allow herself, or anyone else.

So bottom line, to all that:

He pissed her off.

She wanted to make him _move_ because he was standing still.

She wanted to pull him down from his icy clouds, his ivory towers, his high horses, and right upon their ( _her_ ) first meeting, she'd gotten him to show up exactly the next day, at the same time, she'd made him, Lord of Time, Mocker of Clocks, Finger-Pointer of Archeologists, be _punctual_ for once in his life, and that's how it had continued, now more than ever – the missing weeks in which he escaped her grasp only made sure that she'd never stop to delight in her actual succeeded, for they would never, ever become something she could take for granted.

He'd leave and be gone for how knows how long, and there was probably no one, not even her, who could make him live by clocks and calendars ever again, but even so, that intangible man with the fierce eyes of a winged predator, would eventually gravitate back to her place, like that red string of fate had proved to be a leash of rubber bands in their particular case.

Clara would be busy doing Clara stuff, and he'd just stir up her papers with the winds that followed the materialization sound of his ship, and insolently gesture for her to climb aboard – She'd eventually learned that he _did_ have consideration somewhere inside of him, at least for her when she was all too visibly distraught, but he practically _made a point_ to use it very, very sparingly, but there he'd be, either back too late or back too early, come all this way to pester her into interrupting whatever she was doing; On a good day, he might try to entice her with some sparse but exciting-sounding details on their destination.

He was a bit like a cat, lacking the sociable, enthusiastically affectionate nature and easily won subordination of a dog, a bit more curious, a bit more aloof, a bit further from the sort of mammals that lived in packs, just commonly loitering about her house in irregular intervals more than he belonged to it, and liable to present her with the oddest little gifts.

What never occurred to her before he pretty much explicitly flaunted that fact in front of Danny, was that she had, indeed, never actually refused as much as a single trip, no matter the inconvenient circumstances. It had never occurred to her to 'keep score' of it that way, she'd often be annoyed enough even when she did come along, at least at first, until she ended up either swept up in the adventure or just busy trying to stay alive.

She'd looked at these events as individual incidents, not as a pattern, and so she'd have thought that, if anything, an uninitiated outside observer might have come away with the incorrect impression that he was just pestering her, or that she was the one treating _him_ as a nuisance (So far, they had been in their own private bubble, but Danny's involvement had sensibility her for the fact that their conversations would probably look rather odd to an outside observer, especially now that they'd had years to find their own hermetic little language and done away with much of the outward politeness) but at the end of the day he'd always 'won' without fail –

And just like that, he'd turned the tables on her all over again.

However, if she never had any real intention of actually shooing him away – and here's something that could certainly bear some further thinking about – the sole remaining purpose of her resistance was, essentially, to make him say 'pretty please', and he was, in his own words, always 'happy to play your game', but there was no rule dictating that he wouldn't try to 'win' where applicable, so their private little constellation was, as it turns out, a pretty complex web to tread in, a field-grid of gravity liable to fling out any and all celestial bodies that carelessly blundered into their gravity wells without sticking to their stable orbits.

* * *

She was, ultimately, still subject to a certain observer effect, as were any citizens of this universe.

It was presumably the same reason why it had taken him over a thousand years to notice all those identical short, brown-haired girls all around him, or why the key puzzle piece to make sense of the phenomenon never occurred to him before he saw it originate before his eyes – She had never _not_ been there, and how was he to notice that she only ever showed up in places _he_ had visited if his presence was, by definition, something he could hardly leave behind to go investigate without it, and besides, didn't follow many other patterns except perhaps a certain clustering in the surroundings of planet Earth and the many places its illustrious children had gotten to; It didn't even take much of a living creature's natural limitation to their own position to assume that something he'd encounter everywhere he went was simply something that was encountered everywhere.

Similarly, she was understandably ill-equipped to measure anything related to the influence of her own presence – She, too, had to take it everywhere she went, nay, had spread it even further, and if the mind's eye had the power to make creatures of trees and seed the night with waiting eyes, the scope of what she could do here was limited.

So what if his presence brought a light to her eyes, what if he imbued the skin of her face with a private glow and woke the sway of her hips like the first catchy tunes of summertime – He could not reasonably be expected to notice – nor to let himself be noticed, nor let himself be _anythinged_ , really.

He had decreed that she shouldn't see them – the additional bounce in his steps when he knew he was on his way to her, or when she'd left, and left him with the highlight of of his whatever-thoroughly-whimsical-span-of-time-he-was-gonna-stay-out-there, his day most definitely made like some kid whose crush had just invited them to go have some ice cream together.

* * *

Seriously, though, what was that flaunting thing about again?

Why did he have to put her in this sort of situation, why couldn't he have the slightest iota of consideration, if not for Danny, than at least for her? Honestly, what did he _think_ this was going to sound like?

He'd very, _very_ deliberately made sure to make Danny understand that their activities together ha been taking place all around him, even alluding to specific oddities like the time she got herself a tan or that time he'd forgotten that she was still going out for (or preemptive loaded her with?) dinner, things he was probably expecting Danny to retroactively connect with vague observations (although he'd probably underestimate his ability to have actually caught onto the pattern before their confrontation – She had, too.)

At the time, she was mostly frustrated about having to deal with the two men snapping at each other with downright infantile petulance – especially the Doctor, who managed to be _amazingly_ hostile and snide in a way that her students usually reserved for paying back the bullies that used to steal their lunch money. Did any of them really have to ask why she'd made an effort to make sure their paths didn't cross?

Granted, that level of instant animosity was even beyond _her_ worst case scenarios. If there was such a thing as love at first sight, loathing at first sight must be a thing, too. But was there, though? She liked to hope that they'd merely pressed the wrong buttons with each other given the sensitive bits of their back stories, that who they were really directing those bitter words at some other people long buried in their memories, maybe some particular haughty former superior of Danny's, who perhaps just happened to wave around his arms in similar ways, or some military types from faraway worlds whose however well-meaning interventions led something the Doctor had hoped to solve with diplomacy to go up in flames, and that if they only could see past that to the reality of each other, things might be different.

But in reality, her efforts to get that stubborn man to see Danny for his present occupation rather than his past ended up revealing her own failings; For his supposed girlfriend and source of comfort in that new life he was supposed to have started, her understanding of the role his time in the army played in his life and identity was laughably shallow ( _"I'm a soldier, guilty as charged!"_ ) and as for the man whose best friend and confidant she was supposed to have been, it was not her, but his rival who first worked out that for all the verbal sewage he'd used to express his disapproval ultimately had all the intention to respect her life choice once he'd ascertained that her new suitor's intentions were proven sufficiently honest, as much as he still didn't like or even understand it one bit – and lest she delude herself that at least the alternate direction had worked at all, her forays to leverage this to get Danny to see him as she wanted him to see him.

Others she may have been able to convince that he 'wasn't really like that underneath' by the time the day was done, no matter how tense things might get in the middle of the story, but here, the reaction she got was tantamount to "Promise you'll tell me if that _monster_ ever does anything to you so I can protect you." as one might cautiously convince a battered girl to disclose the truth about her abusive husband without scaring her into defensiveness, and she couldn't reply with any sort of satisfying clarification or explanation because back then, she wasn't particularly certain about anything concerning him either.

She wanted to believe that they were just both unreasonably, but understandably protective about a person they liked and didn't want to see being ruined by whatever random weirdo just came along, because then she would be justified in the steps she had taken to ensure that neither of them worried, but a day would come when she would lie in a lonely, tousled bed, long since robbed of them both, and consider whether what looked like fairness and patience on one side wasn't just miserable resignation toward something he knew she couldn't be talked out of, or if the hostility on the other side wasn't just a haphazard cover for the fear that she would tire of their already strained relationship, believe this other person who had all the youth, good looks and social skills, turn her back on everything they shared – from philosophies, to little oddities, to the parts and traits of herself that looked better in the mechanical lights of spaceship corridors – and be lost to him forever.

Maybe, by announcing that she had always come with him so far, he was trying to convince _himself_ that he still filled an important role in her life, more than anything else, as a proof that the two of them as an unit still had some exclusive particularities to them, that he was still special to her, even when reconnecting after that long parting that simply hadn't happened for her, but somehow still made its presence felt... or was it merely the insurmountable veil of the death he should have found on Trenzalore? Despite her once valiant attempts to convince him of the opposite, he knew very well that he didn't deserve to get away with nothing.

She even briefly picked up on his obvious distraught feelings, but he just rebuffed her, and she wasn't about to cater to his whims when she was trying to do her job, have a normal relationship, avoid causalities all the while he was making everything pointlessly harder, so his tiny, halfhearted cries for help went unheard.

(Despite everything, she did not expect the moment he turned around and extricated himself)

(Despite everything, he didn't even begin to realize how pissed-off she truly was until she stormed right out of the TARDIS doors)

* * *

And somehow, they found themselves here, wrapped in a soft, lulling shroud of party background noise and a good, but imperfect replication of a train's ambient machine noises, speeding past the Magellan black hole, their faint reflections remaining exactly where they had been as the lights beyond them danced on, leaden certainties that they would rather ignore steadily swelling in the air between them like the heat that would rise over the course of a party as the room filled with dancing, sweating bodies.

Hard-pressed to even swallow down the air in the way of their words, their latest experience in talking past each other is quite something to behold, and Clara is quite sure that he doesn't know how her gaze doesn't even bother to penetrate the glass, and instead lingers, as discreetly as possible, on the reflection of his features, scanning for any sign or signal to make sense of.

She wouldn't be here if there had ever been a time in her life when she didn't want to hear about black holes, she wasn't some stupid girl that didn't want to see obvious disinterest when it was in front of her nose, instead, it was quite the opposite, she could very much discern what sort of game _he_ was playing, trying his hardest to ignore that this would be their last day together so he wouldn't have to confront this thing called an 'ending' yet, so he could lean back and do their usual routine just one last time, but his melancholy bled through so visibly in the tone of his descriptions, when he spoke of the wealth of worlds that had existed there long ago before it had slowly but surely found its way into one of these cosmic drains, and he looked so visibly miserable, so recognizably ancient with his swept-back white hair and something almost resembling pained tenderness in those large, beautiful eyes that no one so callous had any business possessing, and she found herself wondering when the fact that he'd actually care if she would leave had become something that would surprise her.

She hated this part, she didn't want to have to be in this situation, but the better part of her kept reminding her to be strong and sensible and get this over with – His recent actions hadn't exactly put her in his debt, and today, she had come here for closure, she _needed_ to make him listen to the speech she had prepared before this day was done, for she had already decided that it would be her last chance.

So she carried on with the script she'd planned out and rewritten a thousand times in her mind, complete with a pretty quote and a fancy anecdote to match, never accounting for his inability to tell, or unwillingness to care, when she was done talking. Perhaps his random comments interrupting her merely showcased how wooden her performance of this role had gotten, or maybe it was him who couldn't stand the silence, or didn't know what to do with the situation, maybe his clueless ramblings were merely evidence of how nervous he really was underneath his waistcoat, fancy necktie and uncharacteristic hint of cologne.

One upon a time, he might have been able to be swept up in some dramatic grieving, and once all of _that_ had been carefully squeezed out of him, he'd been left with little less than frustrated, childish petulance, or biting, hard-boiled cold, and that's how he'd landed on her doorstep, but these days, he had finally been mastering how to be a gentleman with disgrace, and he wore that sweetest sadness so stylishly, even forgetting to be obnoxious for a little while, but only until new opportunities and occasions presented themselves.

He wasn't going to stand still in any sort of pretty manageable frame and let himself be pinned down. And maybe she should have imagined that someone with a track record like this would take her jumble of words to mean that he wasn't even _worth_ the energy required for despising him, when what she'd wanted to say was pretty much the opposite; He might be liable to go and revisit those otters; Part of her remained seriously peeved about the unfairness of it all.

If he had to be an arrogant ass, why couldn't he stay one all the time? That way, it would actually feel good to tell him to leave her be.

But alas, she did, instead, wind up clarifying, wrapping her arms around one of his and nestling into his shoulder, something like unscheduled bittersweet elation taking her over.

He noted _that_ , at least, even if he didn't know how to make sense of that 'malfunction', he tried, he saw more than she wished he would, always with the gamebreaking details and never taking so much note of what she _wanted_ to direct his sight toward;

Nevertheless, she though that she should be able to phrase this a way he should be able to appreciate; a truth that united both poets and make-up artists was that sometimes the greatest piece of craftsmanship was that which did not _look_ all that crafted at all, something straightforward enough for it to be right up his alleyway:

"Look, what I'm trying to say is... I don't hate you. I could never hate you."

Oh, how those eyes of his could _glitter_ with sheer emotion – She didn't turn her head to look at him, but she could make it out in their reflection, his half-open mouth next to her artistic hairpin and coral-red lipstick.

She'd stormed out because she felt like he was going all superior on her and looking down; She didn't see herself as the junior partner in this team at all, and she wasn't going to have him talking of bike stabilizers to her face. But whether he'd taken his criticism to heart, meant to prove his claims of having acted out of respect, or just wound up on the more pliant sides of his moods, that day on the beach he spoke to her in a distinctly eye-to-eye sort of fashion, from one space adventurer (or hopeless case) to another, 'this and that has been my experience; Tell me yours if you like, it might come in handy'

A significant quantum of understanding finally passed between them, and then, of all sudden, still between the rails and the doorway, it occurred to her what she must do:

She had to tell him properly.

No truth field this time, no implication, no uncorrected assumptions.

She knew she might never hear it back, she knew it wouldn't be fair to expect him to, but she didn't care. She needed it to be said, and he deserved to know.

For all one might think of how he'd only admitted to what had once existed there a long time ago exactly one sentence after pulling the tired old its-not-me-its-you tactic, at least he'd had the guts to admit it at all, and why shouldn't he? Even if he hadn't said it, he'd still have felt it, and maybe one of these days, she, too, would get it into her head that horrible things would keep existed whether she'd denied them or remained ignorant, or none of these.

He might not even care anymore, nor think it anything more than an annoyance, but maybe it interested it for the record, for posterity, for whatever faded afterimage of his previous self might be lingering around in there, whatever possibility –

In hindsight, he'd certainly been reluctant and she suspected that he a _lways_ was to an extent, but he'd been the _less_ reluctant person compared to her, the one showing things more openly, the one leaving the door open, and she the one enforcing the lines, and he probably hadn't been used to that.

Then he'd drawn back, and probably thought that was just what she wanted as well, and then, just as she was about to walk out the door and leave here thinking that their differences had been too much to surmount in the end, and that they might never truly return to the unspoken harmonies they had before, she becomes bluntly aware that it's possible, one of these things you read about in books and dismiss as silly, soppy garnishments until suddenly, you experience it yourself – Associating your partner with a certain specific scent unrelated to their shampoo or perfume was such a thing she'd dismissed, until she'd met Nina and her slight note of brazil nut, bubblegum and factory-new rubber.

It would be a while longer until she experienced 'spotting a special person's face in a large crowd', 'eyes that whimsically seemed to change color based on mood and time of the day', or that one, particularly silly thing that was supposed to happen when you got reunited after not having seen each other for a while, or lived through experiences that made you see the person in question in a different light, but on that day that should have been the last, Clara did instead come to conclude that is was indeed possible, and had been going on for a long time, like a star that had gone supernova and flung its outer shells of matter into the far reaches of the cosmos, but didn't become properly visible as such until the light telling its tale reached the eyes of the beholder:

Whoever would have thought that it was actually possible to fall in love with the same person all over again, all anew yet stronger than before?

Where had it come from, that entirely different kind of feeling, that low and deep burning, that high and fragile wall coming undone, something long ripened and refined and at the same time abrupt and immediate, like coming awake, like words coming alive inside her thoughts and becoming their own independent entities, thrashing against the walls to make themselves heard:

"I love you."

No use being obvious with him, it would just go right over his head.

Let her be sneaky, and know him well enough to know that he'd pick up on the discrepancies.

The deliberate raising of her voice, her eyes directed at him as he stood by the console, the finesses of her posture and expression, the slight inward curling of her fingers on the railing, as if she was about to do something bold and potentially wrong –

She deliberately left him the option to pretend she'd been talking to someone else, and almost relied on her certainty that he would most certainly take it.

If there was the slightest ghost of a smile in reply, it didn't last much and was so faint it was only really noticed when the corners of his mouth lowered themselves right afterward, when he expected to be left to his brooding of how he might have made her life harder and kept it from being what both of them had somewhat unfairly decided it 'should' be.

* * *

Now, she'd technically witnessed him in all his forms and physically encountered a good five. She'd had the unique privilege of somewhere somehow, learning to cherish every bit of him, and the full of his impact on the world, but even so, with all her latter understanding, his previous incarnation, the one he'd labeled 'the Eleventh' more out of a chosen concept of styling himself than biological fact, would always be special to her, since that was what he'd looked liked when he first _noticed_ her presence in his life, and how he stood beside her in the early days that had made her want to devote herself to him in the first place – but in a similar, yet distinct way, his present self _also_ held a special place in her heart, for reasons that applied to all of him, and others that were particular to him-as-he-was-now – for instance, he'd been the first to take form with full awareness of her, and in her presence, besides, the adult woman who'd grown alongside him in her fearsome power in the full of his view, and thus she wondered sometimes if he, just like his precious self, when he'd chased an illusory phantom of this 'Amelia', a woman long dead – and _longer_ dead for him – in the last extremity, would call for _her_ when he'd lay shattered in the foreign sands of a distant world, where no one, not anymore, not at all, knew something as silly as her mere, mortal little name, not even the furthest reach of connection laid by someone inspired by her inspiration of her students.

She knew, at least theoretically, that big 'ol face of his might easily become the last thing she'd ever see at any given moment, anywhere between right now, unannounced, and some faraway end of her days (and might, in fact, already have become just that in another lifetime, before she even knew she'd personally witness this set of features coming into existence before her eyes) – Her insistence on her illusion of manageable, obtainable safety would not let her go further than to ponder this possibility in a distant, remote scenario she'd merely be humoring for the sake of entertainment, or argument, or exploration. And as a safe sandbox scenario, stripped of uncertainties or further implications, fully in the hands of what she chose to imagine, there could be worse last-ever-sights. ) – but that in itself confirmed how much his current form and being had become intensely special to her.

Maybe it was a bit like the hour-blossoms in Michael Ende's Momo, each of them, each that was her _present_ , seeming like it was the most beautiful one, but him-of-the-present, he-of-right-now was certainly precious to her, in unique ways that she'd miss if he were gone, and that she hoped? Suspected? _he_ might miss too – perhaps, he'd find it refreshing, enlightening in hindsight, if a bit hard to keep up indefinitely –

If people knew how they'd come to view each of their actions in the future, they might come to know significantly less regret, and the world would work by some very different rules, but such was not the type of world they lived in, so they had no choice but to work from wherever it was they had gotten themselves to, and try to get it all a little righter every day, and if one thing that could be said in either of their defenses, it was probably that they were trying to do just that for most of their days –

But apart from that, there was little about their coexistence that fit sure, easy explanations or safe labels, and this was perhaps the most apparent when she struggled to find a fitting appellation, some brief, practical term to explain themselves amid the odd enough circumstance of both their presence in the midst of danger, but how could some simple term encapsulate the in some ways dynamic and ever-shifting, and in others, ever-constant stream of exchanges between them? How she comprehensibly explain away those ever more frequent raised eyebrows when she herself wasn't sure what the should think, let alone what she actually _did_ think of him, and the things that happened over the course of their exploits made her think of him in a different way every day, some days, she'll have this notion that it used to be easier, on others, she felt he'd mystified her since he first showed up on her doorstep and on yet another set of occasions, there might have been a sense of lightness or heavy significance, assuring her that she was glimpsing more and more, more than nothing, or more than before, either way she couldn't quite put her finger on it, so what she gave were perhaps situational, or incomplete answers that may have contained grains of truths, even insights, but could never encompass the subject matter in full, not him, not even her, not anything in their constellation, but she could make do with these statements, the many possible flat maps of a three-dimensional structure, the places the shadows would fall if you illuminated it from different angles – "I'm his carer", "You're one of my hobbies", "He's my hero", "he's been with me for a long time", "He's an alien", definitely not the space dad (If glares could kill, this would inevitably put someone in mortal peril), "He was _supposed_ to have been my friend", "He's not anything of mine at all."

From the beginning, neither of them had been so easy to grasp or define that they could be pinned down to a single, simple principle or archetype, they were each worlds of endless possibility of things to achieve, learn and become, they had each worn many masks even before they became aware of that nearby, kindred existence all around, and they'd worn many more since, and continued to perfect their art, too, but none of all these roles and performances they'd taken on, nor the very worlds of their birth had been able to hold them in full; Some part of them always sought for more, some parts always remained hidden as they effortlessly slipped in and out of their constructed selves, like they were paper masks, or costumes, or online pseudonyms, functional fake identities of varying identities for each of the many situations and compartments of their lives, discarding and drawing them, even switching them around between them at a moment's notice, repeatedly, again and again –

So these are their stories

The unmatched genius, and the impossible one in whom they finally met their match,

The sinner and their salvation,

the madperson and their madness,

the seeker and the mystery,

the saviors of worlds,

Lovers chasing ghosts,

the keeper of secrets, and the chaos that ensues when there's more than one of those

partners in crime, facing the doomsday machines together,

the commander and her most trusted lieutenant,

all the endless variations strewn across a thousand times, a thousand places, always telling that same, oldest story,

a brave citizen of a doomed world, and the visitor from far away who led him to realize that he held the strength to save it with his own hands all along

boyfriend and girlfriend,

the stranger in the mirror and the one who knew him better than he knew himself

the wise teacher and her student,

the hero and their muse,

or just two frightened children trying to find their way back to the path, holding hands as they braved the uncertain shadows, the dark and fearsome forest, the labyrinth, the shadows of the tomb and the turbid stream of the future?

bank-robbers on date night,

the prideful one who wanted to solve everything by themselves, and the headstrong maverick that made them reexamine their preconceptions of themselves and others,

a pair of thrill-seekers on a wild ride to oblivion,

the one devil it takes to know another,

or the wise one remaining behind to tend to the last of her duties, and the one last victory she sought to secure with gentle deception?

If nothing else could be certain, a friend whose support they could always count on, no matter how dark their days.

(and, if she was honest, the only one among all these rings and crowns she had been offered that she could truly be satisfied with)

It was there on the shore that she'd recognized him anew as this being, this man of infinite possibility, who found himself torn between trying his hardest to be a good person, and going out there to experience everything life could offer someone as exquisite as him.

And, in that way, she understood him, now more than ever; and why she would always reserve a special, soft spot for him, why even after all of their disagreements and tribulations, she would proudly proclaim: "I will always forgive, always trust.", why the affinity she felt toward him would endlessly keep sprouting from within the garden of her heart like some exceptionally persistent weed.

(Surely, he'd be one of these fluffy, silvery clock-orbs of dandelion seeds, waiting to take to the sky and ride on the wind to wherever they might be swept, to break through worlds of asphalt and leave misshapen yellow flowerettes poking out in unexpected places)

She'd recognized him as the same sort of being, in a way more fundamental than the layout of their insides, some sort of deeper, subtler truth that instruments cannot detect as of yet.

Maybe this world had no place, and no word yet for whatever he and her were supposed to be, and they would have to create their own idea of happiness with their own hands and their own words.

Or maybe the truth was exceedingly simple, a core of truth they'd held back for so long because speaking its name would have made it all too real and impossible to take back without shattering into pieces.

She thought that she sometimes found what she was looking for, in lines of lyric and twirls of memory, or poems that she would read through and set aside because they struck a cord with her endless going ons, described the events of the day in poignant, epic or surprisingly simple ways, potential snarky comebacks, or phrases that just immediately resonated with her in all possible ways at once;

And she thought that maybe he felt the same on those rare occasions on which he would paint her, rendering her in surprising detail for how meager his capacity to process her as a whole could sometimes be. Perhaps he drew her one detail at a time, aligning the trees to produce the dark of the forest and hoping that the bits exceeding the sum of the parts would be assumed to be there, or maybe she just thought to saw them because she expected them beside his abstractions.

What would she give for an insight in his process of perceiving her, her image in his mind's eye; His sketches and paintings were the closest hints she had but also rather inconclusive ones, but she'd like to hope that he sometimes wished he could reach into the frame and try to grasp her in a however abstract way, much like he tried

It wasn't easy to picture just _what_ he might be thinking when he sat there in front of his easels, appearing to work with as much methodical concentration as he might if he were working on one of his usual deluges of mathematics formulas.

("Rubbish!", he'd once told her. "Even here on the planet of the pudding brains, any university professor worth their salt will tell you that math and logic are as much about _creativity_ as it is about stringent methodology – maybe not the sort that your soldier boy habitually ruins for those unfortunate ten-year-olds, but, the proper stuff. You would understand, wouldn't you?"

"Understand _what?_ " she'd retorted somewhat candidly, mentally debating whether informing him that Mr. Pin was in fact very beloved by the ten-year-olds in question was likely to bear fruit and considering smacking him with the massive door-stopper she was currently reading as a fairly alluring alternative.

Naturally, he hadn't even turned to look at her as he kept scrawling away on his blackboards, starting to resemble a ghostly apparition under all the white dust.

"Ah come on. You _know._ How you can do just as much exploration and discovery with a blank piece of paper as you can with this TARDIS. Well most. Usually. Most of the time.")

* * *

Double stars, it turns out, are – like black holes – far from that weird, exotic oddity that people would associate with statistically rare events like human twin children.

In fact, half or more of those dots of light visible from the skies of the Earth – and one third of all stars at all – were really composed of two individual bodies that only betrayed themselves through careful observation of their oscillations.

Double stars, it seems, were really quite commonplace. So commonplace that out of two given intelligent, planet-dwelling lifeforms, at least one was likely to have hailed from some sort of binary system - "Take, for example, the two of us."

"So you're telling me when you were a boy and looked out of the window, there were two suns out there?"

"Yeah? Shouldn't that have stopped surprising you after a while?"

"Well, I was there, but it was only once, very briefly, an we were standing around in that barn instead of doing any sun-gazing-"

"Only very- ….what are you talking about of all sudden?"

"Gallifrey?"

"Gallifrey? Weren't we discussing _your_ system just now? As I said, I'd think you'd be used to it after... what? Fifty years on it?"

" _Twenty-eight._ " she insisted sharply.

Then, she would find out that she, too, had unknowingly spent those years – whatever amount it might have been – in a binary system of her own, even if double 'star' was not exactly applicable in that context – Apparently, her solar system's center of mass was situated just _outside_ the sun's diameter as a consequence of Jupiter's mass, which apparently struck him as the greatest occasion to begin a longer ramble/rant/lecture on the subject of Jupiter and how it actually was one of the more bemusing and unusual planets of the Sol system – he talked about the oceans under the surface of it's moons, of early travelers and cartographers who found it a lot more noteworthy than the terrestrial planets further inside, given that such large gas giants were most commonly found on _close_ orbits around their respective stars. Jupiter was, in fact, as huge as a planet could possibly be. Those closer-circling, hotter gas giants were often much more massive, but Jupiter was very narrowly situated on the border were, if you were to throw any more mass into it, its constituting matter would actually be compressed by it's own immense gravity and _shrink_ before it got any larger – and by the time one of these denser objects overtook the size of Jupiter, it would no longer be classified as a planet, but a brown dwarf star.

Indeed, it might have been the colossal size and mass of Jupiter that made the inner planets of the Sol system the cradle of life they had gone on to become, as it's gravitatonal pull would have steadied the asteroid's orbits and diverted larger comets that could have wiped out the emergent lifeforms into itself, playing the protective big brother not just for Earth, and it's legacy of humans, Silurians and various tree-creatures, but their cosmic siblings on Mars and Venus –

So in the end, they were both the same.

They were _both_ from binary systems and had been all along.

Clara Oswald tried to be realistic with her expectations – But in a world where mythological archers could jump out of the bushes at any moment, where living statues and flesh-eating shadows swarmed the night, but where fear could still trick you into expecting beasts where there were none, that was not an easy call to make.

("You know the problem with telling the difference between dreams and reality? They're both ridiculous.")


	15. Transmissions (VI - Superposition)

There had been numerous moments after the regeneration where she would have tentatively dared to guess that they might be back to their old status quo, the entire share of good times and the cool nights and heartfelt conversations that followed hard days, and they all could invariably be followed to another instance of her doubting whether they'd understood a single word out of each others mouths since their return from frosty Trenzalore.

So when she'd stormed out of the TARDIS after the debacle on the moon, it had felt like a cummulation, an inevitability that had been overdue for a long time, and in some ways, it really might have been, some crucial lesson the two of them could only have staved off learning for long if they were to keep moving through time at each other's sides.

But now they _knew_ , about each other, about themselves, and about that batshit insane world they had no choice but live in, and knowing was half the battle.

As mentioned before, there were many possible contenders for the moment on which their bond could have been regarded as sufficiently patched up, but there could be no doubt about when it had _surpassed_ the levels of what they had before – When they stirred now, they moved in a strange kind of unison that came about through self-assembly more than any kind of coordination, throw this, catch that, over here, got it already, like the springs and coils of a well oiled-machine, four years (or thirteen lifetimes') worth of practice combining with the crispest and freshest of their new insights like the furious swelling of a violin melody (There was never a real chance of anyone, let alone Danny, buying that 'we haven't seen each other in months' excuse, was there?)

A stranger reading their conversations on a piece of paper might not necessarily catch that there was anything more than annoyance being exchanged; It took actually hearing them speak and watching them move to spot the natural, almost playful back-and-forth in their banter. Their lines were peppered with hermetic terms from all over creation and references to their very own history of past exchanges, and rarely meant to be understandable to anyone but them on their private wavelength – No wonder then that the onlookers these days assumed that whatever weird corner of creation their visitors must have sprung from, it was probably the same, and maybe not even all that incorrect, for after all she had done, with what right would she claim that space hadn't made her was she was as much as her upbringing in Blackpool, and with what right would anyone – him included – dare claim that he was not of the Earth, not by birth perhaps but most certainly by choice and allegiance.

At the end of the day, it didn't matter where they were from, not on days when they'd find their way to places where 'Earth' and 'Gallifrey' would be new, foreign words that would only be remembered as parts of the myths they'd leave behind them, and in the time they reserved for each other, she'd be as detached from the ground as he was, if not more, because she had the freedom to trade even that flight itself for her desk in the staff room at Coal Hill School – To an extent.

Her uncompromising ambition to have it all and her relentless refusal to accept anything else than that ideal third option had been some of her greatest assets and probably the reason that her life was as full as it had been for the past years, but even now, she found herself meeting the limits of what could be done – He _knew_ her, from the candy-covered surface to the sour, chewy center, so it should hardly have been surprising that he didn't require any effort to work out that she hadn't been telling the full story, at least not to Danny, in fact so fast that it drove Clara to wonder whether her efforts to conceal her 'double life' on this one end hadn't been suspiciously sloppy, purposely betrayed by some subconscious pulling to let him now.

Now, whether she'd be prideful enough to claim that this was the only reason the Doctor ever found out depended on whether she was in a confident mood at the moment, which was, and always had been, a frequent occurrence – He'd put a complicated, sentient machine from one of the most advanced civilizations in the history of the universe on 'easy mode' because he actually trusted her to fly it – his most prized home – and she'd be liable to reply "What, because I'm a girl?" like such backwards obsession with trivialities was the only reason anyone could possibly fathom. His own attitude towards things he only kinda-sorta understood was, of course, much the same, and both their pride actually proved to have been _merited_ most of the time.

She knew that she was good, not in a conceited, but in a _correct_ way, and she wanted to be _told_ that she was not because she didn't know, but because she liked to hear it.

And so far he'd always been quite forthcoming with the acknowledgment, maybe less obviously so these days, but when it counted, and his reliance on her skills bared the truth in its own, even stronger languages.

But lately, he seemed seriously more reserved, reluctant even in that regard, not unequivocally so, his reactions, possible thoughts on the matter seemed... complex. He'd seemed so much, much freer when she asked his opinion on that submarine three years ago – maybe it was something she said, something in that last conversation in the console room just before they'd resumed their voyages or the simple facts that even she knew were nothing to be proud of.

She supposed that even _h_ e was not so whimsically proud – and proudly whimsical – as to lack the self-awareness to realize that he had no right (given his various track records) and no business (given Clara's own) telling her anything about honesty – But it wasn't just simple hesitation, nothing simple or straightforward at all, if anything, he seemed at war with himself, or rather trying to contain various distinct responses, to do justice to several principles and concerns at the same time and this was perhaps best exemplified in the disparity between his responses to her performance to their encounter with the two-dimensional creatures he'd personally dubbed 'the Boneless' -

One when he was near suffocation while trapped inside the TARDIS, having reached his limits after several minutes without air supply, apparently choosing to go out with ample praise of her strength and skills if it couldn't be avoided –

And another, once they'd put solid pavement back under their feet, what was, perhaps, a sobering wake-up call phrased in a tone and demeanor somewhere between morbid fascination, a strict, disapproving scowl and some deeper, more fundamental unrest further inside, and she knew better than to assume that it was a matter as simple as him spilling, or refusing to spill his true feelings depending on the circumstances, there was some scathing truth in the factoids he'd made her aware of, things that made her think, too, his harsh comments and the way he addressed her, as always, _abrasively_ equal in his expectations and criticisms, and expecting nothing else but the same to come back from her direction –

Maybe he hadn't liked to look upon is own form, or modus operandi like that, just like he hadn't liked his own handwriting in that heist he'd orchestrated from the future. Maybe Danny was right and she should long since have extricated herself from this madness.

Maybe had a point – she might have been worried for the prospects of this day's little group in the beginning, but when the day was done, she'd been too swept in her moment of triumph to consider the perspective where this didn't happen every day; Maybe he had especially hated to see his ugly mirror image reflected from _her_ of all people, perhaps because Danny's accusations has stung more than he'd outwardly shown, because they'd been new salt on old and grisly scars.

Maybe he'd become acutely aware of the passage of time, not for him, but for _her_ , from the girl who hadn't understood the rationale behind his secrets and demanded to be told why he insisted on hiding his title, to someone who'd intimately learned its meaning and was ready to defend it to others, even keep that same secret herself after she recalled that day in the labyrinth in the Trenzalorian catacombs, to someone who felt confident – and was, after some feebly annoyed protest, _allowed_ – to take his 'name', his complete _signature performance_ for a spin.

Maybe he was left wondering what of it was really his, how flimsy his identity really was, or maybe he'd wondered if she wasn't about to discard _herself_ like a mask, where _she_ had disappeared to in that moment –

Though _really,_ it was really more like one of her many _costumes,_ in the moment, before things had gotten serious, before the inevitable bitter aftertaste, she'd been having fun that instant, taking pleasure in annoying him with the borrowing of his title and making an impression on the locals in the process, giving the local creative young man a bit of the eye, too, and adding to said annoying in the process, maybe this would even qualify as flirting with two people at once, as even the annoying presenting a flaunting of her abilities.

She wasn't so much losing as _discovering_ herself, new parts, new sides coming out under new circumstances, behaving a it different as if one might in a new set of clothes, at most perhaps forgetting or closing off the usual set until she felt like taking them out of the closet again – but that didn't necessarily mean that either of them would _like_ what she had discovered.

In the end, his idea of innocence, or of damage done by seeing the shadows of the world was that of a person who kept all the knowledge to himself and was free to ignore facts for as long as he wanted to, not even held by the passage of days and the opening and wilting of petals – The sad truth was still the truth whether you knew it or not, doom was coming one way or another, and facts, capabilities and truths of her own being didn't depend on himself to reveal themselves – if the truth of the world she lived in was harsh, could adapting to it ever be a purely bad thing?

But of course, adaptation always depended on context; Most plants hadn't evolved the complex reactive systems of animals because they simply hadn't needed them, and while a white animal might thrive in a landscape of snow, the same coat might give it away easily in a dark forest.

Case in point: Terrible habit vs vital survival skill, and somewhere in the middle was he, with the regretful experiences he, as her friend, would like to spare her, and still, some cold and technical appreciation, even impressed admiration of how she'd pulled things off (and she was the same, to an extent – when she'd thrown him the screwdriver and watched his fearsome display as he banished the creatures back to their own realm, her only reaction had been a fond smile – that showoff, in his fancy outfit, waving his wand – She hadn't perceived it anymore, what could have been fearsome abut that snarling, commanding creature in black and red), and he wanted her to know what he thought of her performance, but another thing he wanted was to avoid leading her to ruin.

She couldn't recall the exact philosopher who came up with it, but she'd once read, in an article about the social changes in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, that one of the changes brought upon by the separation of the home and the workplace, as well as the however limited possibilities for social climbing, was how people saw identity – Once, the son of a carpenter would always become a carpenter, and a carpenter was who he would be, as well as a citizen of the same small village...but what if he worked in a factory, and the factory work remained independent from his activities as a father or husband?

So there was an awareness forming of how a person's identity and their social role weren't always the same thing, even the idea that the social role was what remained the same if you changed the person, and the person's identity was what remained behind when they switched between social roles.

Even then, things became even more muddled where art and science met, neither as different from the other as they were believed to be in her local environment, but probably separated by the potential existence of a 'correct' answers in the latter, even if the same phenomenon could surely be modeled in different ways.

There was the question of technician vs performer, of the sort of actor who'd fully immerse themselves and become a vessel for the thoughts of the author or director, or the one who injected a bit of himself in the role and its redefinition, someone presenting the world with 'their' hamlet or 'their' James Bond, down to a singer, and a stage persona that only they could become, but might still be distinct from them, perhaps a sub-set? Where did Clark Kent end and Superman begin, and how did Kal-El fit into this? That sort of questions, and how they escalated when other people's ideas, expectations and assumptions were added into the mix.

Hard questions whose answers they might not like even if they could determine them, so tempting to leave them for another day, but pressing enough to make him consider and person he could hardly stand as a solution as long as they were different from the person he liked the least of all.

Maybe he was afraid and facing a frightening thing at either branch of this crossroads – At least right now in this current phase of his life, she was the closest, most precious person to him in the world – And that's why he came to her, for all sorts of things, be it just some fun time together or a prospective great experience he'd like to share with her, a huge task for which he wanted one of his most ´skilled right-hand people nearby, or was even daunted to undertake all by himself, or just for basic comfort and company after a bad day.

That's why he really didn't want to have to part with her any time soon.

But he'd rather leave and remember her as this person he liked immensely in the centuries to come than knowing that he'd distroyed everything he liked about her with this own hands.

Of course, he never considered that perhaps the opposite would happen, that her example as someone he shared certain things with, but still remained someone he liked , might make him like himself a little more, but both their hesitation to confront the certainties awaiting them ensured that things got worse before they got any better, and all this taught them two things they should have expected:

That the disparities in their perception of themselves and each other could still be quite palpable even when – or exactly when – they were forced into the most complete kind of cooperation, with only one of them having access to the outside world, the phantom of the opera and his angel of music, his spirit and her voice, in _one combined,_ the beautiful mask to bring the beast's genius to the world, joined with her own skill and radiance -

And, that whatever they were made of beneath everything, that elusive, fugacious something that couldn't be fully described by 'Miss', or 'Oswin' or 'Ozzie' or 'Boss', _or_ 'Doctor' or 'The Renegade' or 'John Smith' or 'Theta Sigma', nor even the far too pompous string of syllables his parents had once chosen, was pretty similar, in a way that transcended even their different backgrounds and the significant disparities in the layout, durability and overall state of their flesh, and, if nothing else, they had that mutual awareness of each other's true merit – and true danger – to give each other the occasional course correction or at least make them very aware of what they were doing.

They had no illusions about each other's pride, and she had his default strategy, the step-by-step procedere he didn't even need to finish explaining to her, as seen through as he had the secrets she'd kept, she'd picked up on his tendency to engineer his foe's defeats with their own petards.

He _did_ get that reputation from somewhere – He showed up on the scene, and soon after, all hell would break loose even if he didn't seem to do more than to stumble from one exploding room to the next exploding room because it was slightly less on fire.

But there was that subtle deliberateness in the question he asked, the places he visited, the levers he flipped, maybe not following a plan but constructing multiple possible scenarios based on each new piece of information somewhere in his head, a cunning too disgraceful for your basic dashing hero, but still very much there in case it should become needed.

She knew, she'd seen.

She'd approached these voyages, or life in genera, with an analytical mindset to begin with, and though she was less likely to mumble things about narrative conventions to herself, it was because she didn't need to because she'd become firmer, surer in the handling of red buttons and the like.

He felt alive when she was here, like she was where she was supposed to be, in was what supposed to have been her element all along, the voyages she wanted to go on, the exiting thing she was waiting on... but that was dangerous. Uncertain. Difficult terrain, past the point where return might not be possible.

If those feelings and all that were _here_ , they were nowhere near firmly in her grasp, they weren't within her control, and they would, instead, be tied to one of the least reliable, least _predictable_ of people around her, to the fickle circumstances of their exploits, at the mercy of their arguments and moods... and it didn't take a genius to see how this wasn't a good idea, it was not a good idea _at all,_ better to keep this compartmentalized, better to keep all the doors open...

She thought that was the right answer, but these days, the 'right' answer, as a concept, was not as clear as it once had been. There might not always be such an answer that cud wrap things up without any broken eggshells anywhere – and even if there _was_ , she was beginning to fear that being _right_ might not necessarily make it the true answer when it came to her life in particular.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: A very unappreciated genius fact about 'Flatline' (that makes it even more ironic when haters who'd be dissatisfied with any amount of Clara complain that there was too much of her in it) is that (in part because of the simple plan that he had to explicitly explain it to someone else) it contained some very articulate & accurate meta-analysis on the Doctor's typical procedere. Like, you could look through all sorts of past episodes and notice how he carries those same steps out, how he can be very deliberate underneath the sillyness (most notably the purely psychological boasts (Voyage of the Damned says hi) or the group dynamics assessments.
> 
> Interestingly he was pretty bad at this when he was fresh out of Gallifrey's spires, he picked up the heroic leader act from Ian Chesterton, and modified/ continued to further refine it it to suit his own style and strengths – He's a sly bastard. Always has been. Interestingly honest about it these days, and Clara's the same... and I absolutely love how they know that about each other and we basically get to watch them kick lots of butt together.), you realize that this is still the same guy who used to be Seven, he just chooses to go with improvisation because he believes in it - They've sort of pulled of the usual once-per-season 'give the lead actor a break' episode without actually having him and his character be less of a presence in it.


	16. Ruminations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Spontaneously inspired by rewatching the TNotD prequel & a creative name for a lipstick shade I bought & tested recently. It makes sense in context. )

When he pictures her in his mind's eye, he imagines her with a challenging smile, the sort she wears when she's about to try out something new and potentially frightening, sometimes all bold, sometimes with vestiges of nerves tugging at the corners, that inexplicably haunting Mona Lisa smile that kept him whacking his brains at night, disclosing mostly elation, but intermingled with traces of something else, always holding something back.

There is that twinkle he can't make sense of, is that the light of salvation that glimmers in her lively youthful gaze, or the cartoonist evil gleam that's too obvious for him not to miss?

That's a serious concern, after the new Paradigm Daleks, the Pandorica and the trap at Demon's Run – it grates him to know, but the forces out there know how he things and all this smells too badly of someone's handwriting.

And then there's how she doesn't know how _he_ knows the intricacies of her smell and taste, a provocative sweetness with just a sting of fresh sourness, a sprinkle of geraniol, a blossoming universe extending from Dragon Fruit to Pomegranate, from Poppy to something broader, deeper like Orange Oil, or how inconvenient that is when he's not sure if he can even trust her, and slowly finds her holding more and more of him in the firm grasp of her small, deceptively delicate fingers, hands that he's since seen used to do wonders, wield power, and broker peace –

It was one thing with she burst in completely unexplained, defying his ideas of feasibility and leaving him wanting like some stray beam of rainbows and pixie dust, but now, he'd learned her reasons, he'd found out what _made_ her the person that caught his eye, witnessed the crimson flower spring from a soil of stories and kindness, the unique meetings and deeds of two parents and four grandparents, from tragedy, happenstance and firm decisions made in spite of them, he'd gone and _measured_ that particular marigold, and contrary to popular belief, that hadn't led him to disappointed disillusionment, but to wish he could physically kiss the Fibonacci-Numbers he'd found in its leaves and petals, in the intricate arrangement of those minuscule blossom-chalices in its center; You see, what looked like one flower was, in fact, an extravagant home to many of them, and what, at first lance, looked like a mature, presentable if somewhat clumsy girl contained much more facets within her than eyes could hope to discern.

Somewhere beyond those large, soft brown eyes, passion flows like a river of blood, Dionysus and Apollo find themselves locked in eternal battle, and there's a silver gate hiding a garden of fanciful flowers that very few have tread in, and if that glimmer in her eyes is how that gets to manifest, he could almost live with it, even delight in the privilege of seeing the bits and pieces she shows no one else, but he's lost too much, too often, and unexplained facts he cannot ignore grant a perfect pretext to his long-held certainty that he cannot, does not deserve, there needs to be some kind of catch somewhere, some price he'll have to pay.

He still can't put the pieces together, and every gap, every nook and cranny, leaves room for the worst, any number of worsts, and he's almost sure than when he finds out, he will have to part with her –

When he was at her side, when they were running, laughing today, it was more or less possible to put that aside, to let it slide, to force himself to stay within the moment and let himself experience for as long as it lasted – But he hope that she would never know of the feverish, festering madness that followed when she left him to his thoughts, his endless staring, clicking through pictures that had no business being related, this being just one issue, one part, one more thing cementing his lack of excuse for the bewitchment he'd let himself be overcome by, and he was neither naive nor foolish enough to confuse his own pathetic longing for something she'd be actively doing to him – And in that sense, he had nothing for which to fault that mysterious smile of hers –

He, too, concealed from her, and he hoped that she would never find out how much – He didn't need to see her horrified reaction to 1200 years worth of filth to know that the did not want to know.

(And here's another thing about marigolds and popular belief: In Science, some of the more significant advancements & exciting discoveries can happen exactly when your theories are proven _wrong._ )

* * *

When _she_ thinks of _him_ , she imagines him with that brooding, somber expression he often wears when he thinks she's not looking, his frown so dark not even his silly bow tie finds a way to mitigate it, something about him binging to mind that stretched, vacuous heat imediately before a summer tempest.

She supposes that a part of her likes it, gets a kick, a fix even, out of being needed by some tortured, melancholy hero who looks miserable when his wet, dark hair sticks to his face in the summer rain, but in the end, she's a sensible girl and knows to enjoy what she has rather than to expect the impossible; She can't let herself cause them both undue embarassment, or allow her mind to slip on the obvious question at hand, on what he could possibly be thinking, hiding behind those big sad eyes of his - his presence at her mother's funeral, the sudden shift in his demeanor after those usuncessful attempts to get her to 'bond' with his ship and all those little half-mentions, unfinished setences that didn't add up, seemed to form puzzle pieces, shards of ancient vases that no archeologist could put together before they'd excavated some other parts-

Perhaps she'd simply have to wait until the next clue came her way, and until then, stay focussed and cautious in here, in more ways than one -

By now, he should have realized that she o all people would never be satisfied with just dropping out of his life without ever knowing his thoughts.

(Someday, when these days are long past, and these doubts long resolved, she will wake up from a long dream and remember that he smells like the warm, cozy atmosphere of an old house equipped with rivolous christmas decorations and rooms funished like small, family-owned antique shops, that his taste spans everything from the frish crisp of lemon to vanilla and gingerbread, from fond memories of peppermint drops to the sweet balmy summer air when it's been cleansed by a storm. )


	17. Transmissions (VII - The Beguiling of Merlin)

_"Live with a man 40 years. Share his house, his meals. Speak on every subject. Then tie him up, and hold him over the volcano's edge. And on that day, you will finally meet the man."_

_-Joss Whedon_

* * *

So there was her great miscalculation:

In the end, the person you give your feelings to was _supposed_ to be able to throw you off balance to an extent.

That what it meant when someone's feelings were more important than yours, and your measures to keep them safe.

That's where the expression 'stolen your heart' comes from.

Of course you want to have the caution and sanity to be wary of those who would see devotion as a weakness to be exploited, but it's not like the person who cares less in a relationship is the one who "wins". There is some opening up required to get the full experience.

In the end, they both had the same problem:

Her,

In order to keep a handle on life, to never feel lost again, to live up to her mother's legacy, for herself – to get what she wanted.

Him,

because he had to make hard decisions, because the unsteady life he led assured that nothing would ever stay in his life for too long, to live up to those who expected a hero in his stead, for those who'd died along the way.

Both of them,

for the people who might _still_ depend on them.

In that way, they'd found each other, in that way they'd recognized each other's mixed and contradictory signals, not perfectly, not to an extent that their repressions and hangups would have negated themselves, but well enough. They hadn't been able to carry on with their games as usual because they weren't used to dealing with someone who was the same as them.

This idea that everyone has "flaws" and "streghts"? To hell with it. People have traits, that can be hard to change, and whether they're good or band depend on the context, how they're applied. Some are clearly more useful than others, but most are more complex than just 'good' or 'bad', and when you add a second person with another set interacting in different situations, you get even more of a jumble – In their cases, what kept them together and what created their difficulties was often one and the same.

They could give each other something very few others could offer them, not in this same combination – but they were reluctant all the same, all the _more_ perhaps.

Their reluctance and the extent to which they could affect and infuriate each other was ultimately directly tied to how much of an unique and important place they'd come to occupy in each other's lives.

He had lost so much and dreaded the pain any and all attachments would immediately bring him, but he could not actually _stop_ himself from growing attached. He cared, in _personal_ , immediate ways like one might for one's younger siblings, old friends, and mad loves. He was not that untouchable demigod wandering above the world that his enemies sometimes took him for – He was a silly, curious person who was, ultimately always willing to stand corrected and learn something new, and if he were capable of dismissing the world like that, he wouldn't be willing to live with the consequences of the harsh things he'd had to do to protect it in the first place, he may never have left the ivory towers of Gallifrey to begin with.

And as for her, as much as she had this drive to keep everything around her under her firm hand, she was who she was because that coexisted with curiosity, openness and a drive to be challenged – her desire to experience something worthwhile was usually stronger than her desire to stay within her comfort zone, and things that didn't fit into her idea of the world interested her more than they frightened her, so while she did have some capacity for distortion or denial, she couldn't ever become the sort of person who'd viciously stomp on everything that didn't fit into her ideas.

In that sense, they had both chosen the curses of their conditions, and with each other, they were as much at long last rewarded as finally justly punished.

And maybe that was the only way he was ever going to accept happiness – There was a part of him that had never fully believed that he could ever possibly deserve happiness, and that was part of why he was so suspicious when she first came into her life, why he was always so quick to draw back, let go, send her away, extricate himself-

But after what she'd proven herself capable of on that black, black day, she didn't believe she deserved happiness, either.

Maybe she'd been putting 'happiness' quite secondary to what 'should' be all along, and perhaps she'd equated it with the sort of sentiment that makes you give something up to help a friend in need, but whom had her latest actions ever helped?

Certainly not Danny.

Him least of all – in that blunt, heavy whack of a moment, she felt the sky cracking and tension pulling at the sinews of the world, knocking the breath right out of her, and this was not supposed to happen here, this was supposed the reliable, predictable part of life, this was supposed to always be there for her to return to it – Danny Pink was supposed to be there tomorrow when she went to work, to patiently listen to whatever she had to vent that day, tell her some insightful thing that would make her feel justified , and help her produce those descendants she was supposed to have had if she hadn't misunderstood from the beginning.

Trapped under her skin in a life that she didn't want to be hers anymore, suffocating under the weight, the sheer, heavy implication that she'd always carry that irreversible weight wherever he went, the wrongness she would feel whenever she dared to be happy – happy alongside a man he hated – while an innocent, even virtuous man would rot in the ground, would be scattered as ashes that would be floating around somewhere each time she'd be doing something he could never do again.

She was supposed to have apologized, to have put this right like her sins and deceptions had never happened, but that was impossible now, and she had no more flimsy excuses to shield her from the weight of her deeds, and how they'd let to the worst possible consequence, and she couldn't escape the responsibility.

She'd let her guard down, she'd let the truth out – whether it was the truth he put together when he found her work on the TARDIS, or the truth she let slip in the console room, after their encounter with the Foretold – and now she couldn't fix it, and she felt her chest tightening, her fingers losing focus, all of her body just freezing into place like it was bound by many wires and tiny ropes, like Gulliver upon his arrival in Lilliput – She was not capable of any reaction other than deadened numbness as she felt the plans and certainties of her life derail all around her –

Her grandmother was probably right when she, as always, saw through that pallid, impassive mask and told her to let the feelings flow, but letting herself feel, or process it, even _begin_ to do anything but delay the moment she would do that through increasingly iron denial, would mean making it real, admitting it had truly happened – this couldn't possibly be real, she didn't _want_ it to be real-

And in that moment her wires crossed, and her raw, jumbled feelings attached themselves to any hint of any chance of possibly reversing this.

She wouldn't let go, wouldn't let herself be lost, powerless and suffocating as long as she hadn't exhausted all her resources, squandering everything at her disposal for her need to take back a semblance of control, to force her will on this whole damn universe after all she had done to save its sorry backside – anything to stave off the creeping awareness of just what she had done.

Nothing could stop her now.

From a certain point of view, she was, perhaps, still hanging on to some twisted remnant of the trust and esteem she placed in him – She knew she was fortunate enough to be owed by him and she'd seen him do the most brazen wonders right in front of her eyes, so it might not surprise anyone that she would call for him in this darkest hours, to inquire if he could bend the rules for her and haggle for a little more time to uphold and perfect her fiction and restore that steadily crumbling, perfect image of virtue –

But she couldn't risk him saying no.

She was gonna have to _make_ him, no big deal, she'd done it before, made him do her bidding hundreds of times – Her Emotions were numbed into silence, and yet, all that was driving her; Her mind was racing through a multitude of scenarios, but not once in her icy calculations did she think of what would happen _after_ , his logical reaction to the means she was about to resort to – Her thoughts didn't go further than the moment when she'd have Danny back right in front her and would get to exhale in relief and put everything right – Given that she would have saved him, they would be even. Bringing him back would make it alright, make everything how it _should_ be and undo everything that shouldn't be, like waking up from a nightmare.

She'd make him put it right, of course she would; he had him assessed, analyzed and understood, didn't she? She knew all his hiding places, all his little gadgets, and oh, she remembered him speaking time and time again about how precious his ship was to him; It was the means to his lifestyle, a beloved hostage, the last thing that hardened man could possibly have left to lose – though initially war of her, he'd come to trust her with his every secret, given her ample opportunity to understand how he operated, and pick up a little of his 'magic' by herself, and so, she was become Vivien, the deceptive disciple turning on the wise old mage, who had, ultimately, not been completely above being a frivolous braggart, one who should find herself trapped between fire and ice down in the ninth circle of hell: A traitor. A betrayer, to both of them and all they, or she, had ever stood for. Deceiver, faker, cheating whore, serpent two-face, the lowest thing there is – she with the cheeks and lips like apples and the blood of reptile underneath, not a person, but a disease, selfishly pulling her surroundings with her into the abyss.

Now she'd done it.

She'd gone and broken all the things that were good in her life.

There she was, ready to trap him in a cave under a stone, or just amidst streams of lava befitting a cartoonish supervillainess. But he was an ancient beast and the smelting heat before a tempest, he was the dark heart at the bottom of the ocean, and he knew _her_ , too;

He might have picked up that something was wrong the moment she stepped onto the TARDIS, maybe what had passed for his usual sour manner were actually subtle attempts to dissuade her- but once she'd made her move, there could be no doubt that the old monster had seen straight through her feeble machinations, and used the 'sleep patch' right back at her.

Not so frivolous after all, it turns out – For all the breath of himself that he might have opened to her, he had never forgotten that she, too, was a monster, and he was too seasoned, too experienced, to well-prepared in this sort of thing to allow himself to be hoist with his own petard.

He even told her straight to her face, in the middle of her display, that he knew himself to be very much in control, fully aware that she was so far at his mercy that even her knowing would make no difference in the end.

His long history had prepared him, with strong-willed ladies and wistful historians trying to save doomed civilizations, and a girl who had been moved by a simple jolt of human emotion to save their ill-fated fathers; He'd been tempted himself at times, but never had he faced something this calculated and deliberate from someone he'd have considered an ally.

He should have been fearsome, an angry god to cover before, but to the end, he didn't seem to have believed that she would really do it, that he would not be able to talk her down. When he accused her, his voice was not stern and authoritative, but quite affected, barely restrained anger and disappointment quaking in his voice.

He'd watched with morbid curiosity, but he'd also given her an opportunity to purge and vent in an enclosed environment until the mask of denial broke and full realization set in as her tears finally flowed and grief for a lost man and sins both new and old claimed its rightful place.

He tried to summon up some measure of composure, to normalize their impending orphean journey with some disapproving comment about the state of her eyes, but he couldn't manage it – His voice trembled halfway through, the last few minuted kept bleeding through into his expression, he was, all things considered, hopelessly undone – She'd hurt him, no two ways about it – Thinking that she'd been helpless against the universe, she'd scratched and bitten at everything around her, and it would seem that she did have claws, and with them, the power to destroy.

This time, she couldn't overtake him or make him do her bidding, but she found out that she didn't _have_ to take or force his devotion, nor lay a single finger on him to make hi fall to pieces – All this time spent trying to control him and assure his submission, when the most valuable dedication was that which was simply _given_ of his own free will.

His loyalty might not always have come when, or how she expected it, and sometimes it had manifested in ways that had been misguided or hard to decipher, but now she knew that its depths were limitless.

She was humbled again by how little she'd really known about him, how crucial a detail had sipped past her feelers all along. He'd been saying all those harsh and insensitive things, and wile she learned to see past it, live with it even, it was only then that she fully realized that he only did this because he assumed that everything was taken for grated, that she knew anyways what he now just sadly 'reminded' her of – When she'd confessed her feelings after their adventure on the Orient Express, she didn't do it to hear him say it back, she merely did it because she wanted him to know.

Now, their mutual honesty hangups had engineered a situation where it was possible for this to happen both ways.

He was sneaky about it as well, just as she had been; It was just an incidental extra layer added to the sentence by a single word, the way he'd explicitly said 'care for' instead of 'care about', which she, as a notoriously perfectionist English teacher, was bound to notice – and how this might've been contradictory to the complete abandon he treated this revelation, like it was just some courious background fact he was casually mentioned because it incidentally pertained to the topic of his loyalty. To him, it probably was.

He'd first openly revealed his feelings when he informed her of his decision not to act on them anymore, but he'd never outright said that they were gone. Those feelings, it turns out, hadn't gone anywhere at all... but how could she possibly reply to that now, when she's still mourning Danny and breaking under the guilt of the many ways she'd failed him? What right did she have to speak up now after what she just did, now that she feels so unworthy of everything and everyone in her life?

There was no way she could say anything now, and that was probably just according to his plan; He didn't want to bother her with that, or feel pressured... nay, he had fully accepted that the one she wanted, needed and loved was someone else, someone he couldn't even stand, someone about whom he didn't have the slightest idea why she could possibly like him, and he was wiling to do anything in his power to bring him back to her.

This was the designated hypotenuse in a soap crying that she wants her beloved to be happy even if it's not with them, this was the little mermaid's spirit kissing the prince on the forehead before ascending to do her time with the daughters of the air. This was a man who had wholly and completely given up, even on just having her near – He didn't presume that she'd be interested in spending time with him any longer after this whole traumatic event, given that he'd been a factor that had complicated her relationship.

This might be farewell, and that's why he even considered letting her know, everything that had been there had stayed exactly where it was, a feeling burning so slowly, that its stir and swell could hardly be perceived and made it easy to mistake for a static thing, ever and steady in the sky; A love like the sun that dwelt in the unreachable distance, beyond layers upon layers, light minutes' worth in sheets of cold nothingness, and still continuously enveloped the earth with its gales of heat, light and energy, even when in couldn't be seen from behind the clouds.

She had easily seen through his excuses during his little 'undercover' stint and correctly deduced that he wasn't telling her because she wouldn't like the answers. She'd instantly known that he hadn't told her the full truth about their space-train venture the second she saw the force field around the TARDIS. But this, this most crucial, hilariously obvious thing surprised her now, and, in combination with the circumstances, along with the greater declaration of loyalty her words were woven into, it was woven into, left her too shocked, too absolutely floored to even consider to do anything about it, she just stood there with large, tearful eyes as the words in and of themselves burnt within her soul.

But seriously, even in hindsight, what could she even have done? Run toward him and embrace him, kiss him even? Say it back? That's what you'd expect to happen in a book or something, but in the cold hard light of reality, it seemed ludicrous?

As a person who once foolishly prided herself of her integrity, she felt tiny and dwarfed next to the unconditional devotion of a man she had so grossly misjudged.

What right could she possibly have to speak of love after the deed she'd just committed, after mere days of promising those words to someone else?

How could she, how _dare_ she think that she, now newly single, could just go off frolicking in outer space when Danny Pink lay rotting in the ground? The very thought seemed grotesque, a transgression the laws of the universe would most certainly not allow – No, her place was where it ought to have been these past few months, where she'd promised it would be when she agreed to be Danny's girlfriend, and if that place was within the cold slippery earth, in the trenches of Malebolge or on the bottom of the sea, then – and the was shamefully aware of her hesitation at this point – so be it, for they were ready to depart: Next stop: Tartarus, where the Titans where chained, next stop: Helheim, between the roots of the world tree, and who knew what their vows would be worth after the sights of today –

So this was all she could say:

"I don't deserve a friend like you."

What came out managed to be both depressing and uplifting at the same time, marinated in his rather characteristic mixture of frankness & self-deprecation, and not even making a big deal out of how easily he'd just consigned himself to her, to belonging to her, to being here _for_ her in one sense or another – and maybe he'd done so long ago when he chose to come and get her no matter what, right when she'd proven her readiness to do the same for him, when he'd been able to take this form of his as a result, or some other unspecified point of their joint ventures, but there he was, truly and completely bewitched, standing there all along, ready for the day she might need him to break her fall, or to tentatively her own tiny fingers in a small and uncertain gesture, frayed, but willing to state down the darkness with her.

* * *

"Never trust a hug, it's just a way to hide your face." -

Now that made an unexpected amount of sense. Not the words themselves, of course, in the life she'd be leading now, she would need to have at least this much common sense left – But the idea that _he_ would think this, _that_ made sense, always the rebel, with or without due cause, and prone to unprecedented randomness, leave it to him to find the commonly accepted form of expressing affection _distinctly overrated_ , leave it to her to wait till the end to ask the simple question that would reveal what she'd perceived as a frustrating, daunting barrier, a remainder of world she may never tread in – which was, perhaps, why she'd never expected any sort of decipherable answer before now, why she'd gradually let up on her initial insistence to make him get over himself in that regard, because it occurred to her that it might possibly something to do with touch-telepathy, some involuntary revulsion of her warm and squishy human flesh or some other fix, immutable distinction in their conditions that couldn't, and shouldn't be changed – but in the end, the reasoning behind it turned out to be a sentiment fairly akin to one of her students boycotting a fashion trend or some part of the institution that was the school and as such a simple extension of his general stubborn disdain for any sort of pleasantries, his view that they were dishonest and useless either way –

Now it ocurred her that for all he'd protested the occasional unsheduled bear hug, he'd been far less reluctant - if still considerably awkward and not always completely comfortable - when it came to other touch-related vetures, such as linking arms with her, taking her hand or some brief, 'guiding' gesture on each other's backs, none of which were even terrily rare occurences when you didn't explicitly draw comparisions to before his stay on Trenzalore, and by now, she'd learned to content herself with that -

And yet, here he was, actually compromising on the etiquette, not even arguing when she asking and even getting up fist, letting her tiny body fall against him, even tentatively closing his arms around her, slightly turning his head in the tiniest, subtlest of caresses – She had wished for something like this to happen for a very long time, so many nights interrupted by dreams of holding him close again, but now, his sagging, icy cheeks against her face brought her little respite from the heavy truth she'd chosen to swallow down.

She couldn't say if it had always felt like this or if that was merely a testament of how long she'd been severed from his chest, but it didn't feel like proximity, not really, not when there was no real warmth, no real substance on he bony, narrow shoulders beneath her arms, all made out of sharp angles that could have cut her, not when their souls and minds that had never been in twain for long were forced apart by the secret burning in her chest, the tale of sorrow she wanted to share with him so badly, but could not.

If anything, it was his words, the modicum of personality contained in that last puzzle piece about him, much like the sight of the TARDIS outside the Café doors, did much more to spark a sudden awareness of the life she would be giving up much more than his weight in her arms or his soft hair vaguely tickling at the side of his face.

In that moment, her expression wavered, and she felt acutely aware that she would never step through those blue doors again, never leave her tiny little fragile blue orb for as long as she lived, never find any sort of _constructive_ use for her polished serpent tongue that was just a simple vice here, and at that, the one that had been her undoing, and the cause for a sin she could never undo.

If she could stay with him, he might have taken her to some great and exciting place, another of those decisive turnstiles of history where her skills and traits would be exactly what was the endangered masses would be needed. And if he could stay with her, with the knowledge she had now and these last few revelations that had become quite clear between them, they could have stood together at the top of the world and lived out her blaze of glory, now that she would never have a reason to doubt the deep affections, affinity and appreciation he had a hard time showing, nor would there be any further grounds to hold back from showing him hers –

But as it turns out, there _was_ one thing that could make her give him up and leave him with a defection, the same thing that had put a stop to her plans of traveling when she first pursued the idea in her youth – A friend in need. Back then, it was the Maitlands; Now, it was him who needed her, not to stay with him but to let him go, to refrain from burdening him with any further guilt now that he'd finally found his home world and seemed uncharacteristically intent to actually stay here, perhaps a testament to how much his long journey had eventually worn him out – There was a good chance that at least some of those children and grandchildren would turn up alive, maybe his parents and brother, possibly his classmates and many political allies from his past interferences back home – Even if he didn't come to rule the place, he'd be far too busy with too many things, and she'd only be a sad, brief glimmer of a girl completely out of place, staring dejectedly out of the towers while nursing her own personal grief.

And in a way, it only seemed right they couldn't just continue their journeys as if none of this had ever happened - after all she had done, to him, and to others, she didn't believe that she could deserve happiness - Get a move on, fair Nimue, you might still be sucessful at deceiving the old master after all.

* * *

(But amid all the lies exchanged that day, one of these things was true. She gets the collected words _right_ for once, the grave pause connects like a sharp low, the delierate repetition manages to hit right home carrying the wealth of her thought and feeling like a short poem or one of these Six-word-stories:)

"Travelling with you made me feel really special. Thank you for making me feel special."

"Thank you for exactly the same."

(He says, unceremonially, almost insultingly casual, just mentioning, not inclined to drag out the farewell any more than strictly necessary - there's nothing more he's got, or is willing, to say that hasn't been said already, or isn't sufficiently paraphrased by the last long look his lare grey eyes take at her before he turns to close the door. To the woman who never saw herself as the junior partner in their team to begin with and had found herself frequently incensed by possiilities of how he might view her, he could not have done a greater honor.)


End file.
